Designing effective curricula, whether or not it is technology-based, is a complicated task and involves a longitudinal iterative process of design-implementation-research. Technology-based curriculum designers are faced with an added difficulty—the lack of guidance about how to translate existing knowledge in the learning sciences into effective software features.
Traditional reports about design efforts usually focus on successful artifacts rather than on lessons learned throughout the process including the less successful iterations. Several attempts have been made to abstract design processes and provide guidelines that can apply to other contexts yet there lacks a common vocabulary or agreement regarding the relevant forms of evidence necessary for designers to build on each other's experiences.
In the past two years the Center for Innovative Learning Technologies (CILT) has attempted to meet this challenge by bringing together designers from diverse projects and institutions to come up with a mutual framework for communicating and synthesizing design practices. The outcome of these collaborations is an online database (http://wise.berkeley.edu/design/) that provides an infrastructure for the broad community of educational designers to browse, publish, connect, and discuss their design principles with peer designers.
One of CILT's core functions is to support the development of new collaborations in the field of learning technologies. CILTKN is a primary vehicle for this support. The CILT Knowledge Network, developed by a subset of the CILT team led by Dr. Christopher Hoadley and advised by Dr. Roy Pea, is not designed to act as a communication tool. Rather, the CILTKN provides an information infrastructure to support collaborating researchers, teachers, and industry partners in the area of learning technology. The KN is a means to collect and disseminate information about learning technology research and its stakeholders. This information about the community resides in several structured databases, allowing dynamic access to the information. The network allows users to share information about people in the field, research or development projects, and opportunities for collaborating. In addition, a library of course syllabi and reading lists from premier graduate schools in the learning technology field allows users to access information about foundational research. By making information easy to find and share, CILTKN helps people learn about the field and locate collaborators. CILTKN is located at www.ciltkn.org
This is an education software application for the Palm computer developed by Stephen Bannasch of the Concord Consortium and Evan Wies of Immerse. Using the Concord Consortium Sonic Ranger (a motion sensor) connected to a Palm via a standard serial interface, users can see real-time data and graphs of position, velocity, and acceleration over time.
The Palm and similar applications are available at http://concord.org/slic/ccsr-doc.html
The source code for the Sonic Ranger application is freely available. Contact Stephen Bannasch, stephen@concord.org
Synergy projects create curriculum materials for use in classrooms, including software, lesson plans, and other aids. Curricula are freely available on the Internet at the following addresses:
Strawberry Creek Demo project:
http://wise.berkeley.edu/WISE/demos/strawberry/
Alameda Creek Demo project:
http://wise.berkeley.edu/WISE/demos/alameda/
The WISE website also includes electronic support for communities of teachers who are running WISE projects, and for the process of localization for successful adoption of these projects into a particular classroom and curriculum.
Synergy projects have also produced tools for simulations and assessments related to water quality curricula. These tools are currently available upon request for use by other Synergy teachers, or in other classrooms that are running water quality curricula. Citations are as follows:
Brophy, S. P. (1999). Dynamic causal mapping of ecosphere simulation. [Computer program]. Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University.
Brophy, S. P. (in progress). Electronic scoring rubric of concept maps. [Computer program]. Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University.
Brophy, S. P., Vye, N., & the Cognition and Technology Group at Vanderbilt University (CTGV). (1999). Scoring rubric for concept maps used in SMART Science Project. Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University.
Vye, N., Elder, A., Brophy, S. P., Stewart, C., Zech, L., & CTGV. (1999). Water quality assessment instrument and resources. Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University.
Pfaffman, J., Vye, N., & CTGV. (1998). SMART's on-line assessment system. [Computer program]. Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University.