Kristen Blair
"New Opportunities for Feedback in Educational Technology"

noon–1:30 p.m. 303 Annenberg Hall 2120 Campus Drive

The Learning Sciences presents Donald A. Norman
Breed Professor of Design at Northwestern University, author of “The Design of Everyday Things,” “Emotional Design,” and “The Design of Future Things.” Come hear Norman discuss his new book, “Sociable Design.”

ABSTRACT
Sociable Design
How do we know what to do in novel situations? Sometimes we ask, sometimes we watch. And at other times we make inferences by observing signifiers, signals in the physical or social world that can be interpreted meaningfully. Sociable design extends the arena of design from function, aesthetics, and emotion to the world of social interaction.  Much of our activities involve other people, even things we believe we are doing in isolation. In this sense, all tasks are social, for no task is done in isolation of the needs of others. Sociable design requires system thinking, changing our unsociable products that work well in isolation but horribly in the world of other objects, tasks, and events into ones that work well together, sociably. Forget affordances: it is the signifiers that matter.

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by Elizabeth Babcock, PhD, Director of Education and Library Collections, The Field Museum
 
As a public education and research institution, measuring performance at The Field Museum has many dimensions. The Museum's scientific staff is judged on traditional academic criteria (e.g. publications), as well as participation in exhibition development and educational outreach. Admission numbers and visitor demographics are another critical indicator of success, and are linked to exhibitions and community outreach efforts. Program utilization and changes in knowledge, attitudes and skills are some of the criteria used to evaluate education programs. But perhaps the most critical area of performance at this museum, and science museums in general, is the degree to which the museum has increased the public's understanding of science. Yet, this can be the most difficult area in which to measure impact.
 
In this presentation, Dr. Babcock will address the challenges associated with measuring the impact of museum education and scientific outreach programs at a regional natural history museum. More specifically, she will review The Field Museum's performance indicators for marketing and audience diversification initiatives, education programs, exhibitions, and science outreach, and the successes and limitations associated with each.

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by Bruce Sherin, Associate Professor, School of Education and Social Policy

In the Conceptual Dynamics Project, we study the knowledge that students have about the natural world and how that knowledge changes with instruction. As with other researchers in the field, our methods revolve around extended clinical interviews that we conduct with students. Typically, these interviews are transcribed and then coded by hand. But, working with some of our data, Gregory Dam and Stefan Kaufmann (2008) discovered that it was possible to use Latent Semantic Analysis to automate aspects of the coding process that are usually done by hand. During the past year, I have attempted to build on and extend that work. The results are promising. In this talk, I will draw on interviews in which middle school students are asked to explain the seasons. I will attempt to show that, not only is it possible to automate the coding of data, it is also possible to automate the abstraction of the coding scheme. Thus, the result is a computational engine that takes in raw transcripts, develops a coding scheme and outputs coded transcripts.

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School Improvement and What's Next for Me
Noon–1:15 p.m., 303 Annenberg Hall

For a decade and a half, I have worked to build partnerships between the university and public schools to bridge research and practice in the service of school improvement. Work of this sort is both rewarding and maddening. It is rewarding because sometimes I see impact on the lives of people. It is maddening because the intellectual tools necessary to understand improvement are weak. I have come to believe that the weakness associated with our poor understanding has at least four dimensions. First, we need better understanding of how to co-constitute authority, accountability and responsibility within these partnerships. Second, we need to better understand how to create instructional systems that manage routines, technology and human capital. Third, university actors need to strike an activity-balance that recognizes that improvement depends on attention not only to pedagogy but also to social-emotional support, school administration and logistics. And fourth, given the highly interactive nature of school improvement, we need to develop practice-linked theories that embrace the complexity while providing useful lenses to characterize and observe these interactions. My goal for this talk is to highlight the source of some of these understandings and discuss how I intend to use and build on these insights in the creation of a new school.

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The Ubiquitous Learning Conference investigates the uses of technologies in learning, including devices with sophisticated computing and networking capacities that are now pervasively part of our everyday lives -- from laptops to mobile phones, games, digital music players, personal digital assistants and cameras. The conference explores the possibilities of new forms of learning using these devices not only in the classroom but also in a wider range of places and times than was conventionally the case for education. Ubiquitous learning is made possible in part by the affordances of the new digital media. What's new about it? What's not-so-new? What are the main challenges of access to these new learning opportunities?

Along with an impressive line-up of main speakers, the conference will also include numerous paper, workshop and colloquium presentations by practitioners, teachers and researchers. We would particularly like to invite you to respond to the Conference Call-for-Papers. Presenters may choose to submit written papers for publication in the fully refereed Ubiquitous Learning: An International Journal. If you are unable to attend the conference in person, virtual registrations are also available, which allow you to submit a paper for refereeing and possible publication in this fully refereed academic Journal.

Kamran Sedig - University of Western Ontario
noon–1:15 p.m.
345 Annenberg Hall

David Hammer, Professor of Physics and Curriculum & Instruction, University of Maryland
noon–1:15 p.m.
Annenberg Hall, Room 345

Rogers Hall
Professor of Education in Teaching and Learning, Peabody College, Vanderbilt University
Noon–1 p.m., 303 Annenberg Hall

Reed Stevens, Associate Professor of Learning Sciences, University of Washington
noon-1:15 p.m., 303 Annenberg Hall

Debra Bernstein, Graduate Student, Learning Research and Development, University of Pittsburgh
noon-1:30 p.m., 345 Annenberg Hall

Catherine Eberbach, Graduate Student, Cognitive Studies, University of Pittsburgh
noon-1:30 p.m., 303 Annenberg Hall

1–3 p.m., 303 Annenberg Hall

Hosted by The Informalists
February 13, 2009
1 - 3 p.m.
303 Annenberg Hall

Do video games affect our intuitive ideas about physics in the real world? Could they? How do game designers use our understanding of real-world physics in the game world? How might we design games that would influence players' understanding of physics both in and out of the game world?  

Julie Colhoun, Multidisciplinary Program in Education Sciences Fellow
Psychology Graduate Student
303 Annenberg Hall
Noon–1 p.m.

noon–1:15 p.m., 303 Annenberg Hall
Kemi Jona, Research Associate Professor of Learning Sciences and Computer Science
Director of the Office of STEM Education Partnerships

12:30–1:45 p.m.
303 Annenberg Hall

"Unsilencing Marginalized Histories:  How Do Holocaust Educators Perceive and Address Non-Jewish Victim Narratives?"
Danny Cohen
Doctoral Student, Learning Sciences
12:30–1:45 p.m., 303 Annenberg Hall

Professor of Education, Stanford University
12:30-1:45 p.m., 303 Annenberg Hall