Coronado High School

In Summer 2007 we began a long-term partnership with a large urban high school in the greater Phoenix, AZ metropolitan area. We have permanently installed SMALLab in a classroom and are working closely with teachers and students across the campus to design and deploy new learning scenarios. This site is typical of public schools in our region. The student demographic is 50% white, 38% Hispanic, 6% native American, 4% African American, 2% other. 50% of students are on free or reduced lunch programs, indicating that many students are of low socio-economic status. 11% are English language learners and 89% of these students speak Spanish at home. A focus has been our collaboaration with 9th grade students and teachers from the school’s C.O.R.E. program. The C.O.R.E. program is a specialized “school within a school” with a dedicated faculty and administration to address specific student needs. We have developed SMALLab Professional Learning Communities with a cohort of K-12 teachers and ASU researchers. These PLCs have designed, implemented, and deployed learning scenarios in languages arts, earth science, and chemistry in the past year.

Titration

Arizona State University’s Arts, Media and Engineering program has partnered with Coronado High School in Scottsdale, Arizona, to develop embodied and mediated systems that benefit science education. Working closely with high school science teachers, we have created a particle system scenario governed by rules of chemistry.

Goal: The goal of this chemistry scenario is to help students learn about acids, bases, and the processes of titration and neutralization. The scenario invites students and instructors to talk about a variety of molecular and system-wide behaviors in a closed particle system through an audiovisual and embodied experience.

Some of the learning objectives for the scenario include:

• Identifying the key properties of acids and bases
• Describing the processes of ionization and dissociation
• Predicting reactions between particles in solution
• Describing the process of neutralization and its relation to pH
• Describing the process of titration and the role of an indicator at a molecular level
• Observing how energy affects the overall activity of the system

The Scenario: The interactive scenario has three main interaction areas:

• the water volume - the main activity space where students can add particles and observe how particles react with one another.
• the molecules - A student can add a particle to the system by selecting a molecule from one of three selectable areas, one for Acids, one for the Indicator, and one for Base. Students use the glow balls to select and drop a molecule into the water. Particles can also be added at different velocities based on the speed and direction of the ball at time of placement
• the pH display - The pH panel is a numerical system status display of the pH based on the number of hydronium and hydroxide particles present in the water.

As the particles move around water, students can watch as well as listen to the different types of reactions between particles.

To facilitate transitions between action and discourse, the teacher has the ability to pause, play, and restart the scenario using a hand-held game-pad device.

Geological Evolution

The Scenario

The screenshot above shows the visual scene that is projected onto the floor of SMALLab. Within the scene, the center portion is the layer cake construction area where students deposit sediment layers and fossils. Along the edges, students see three sets of images. To the south they see depictions of depositional environments. To the north are images that represent sedimentary layers. To the east they see an array of plant and animal images that represent the fossil record. Each image is an interactive element that can be selected by students and inserted into the layer cake structure. The images are iconic forms that students encounter in their studies outside of SMALLab. A standard wireless gamepad controller is used to select the current depositional environments from among the five options. When a student makes a selection, they will see the image of the environment and hear a corresponding ambient soundfile. One SMALLab glowball is used to grab a sediment layer from among five options and drop it onto the layer cake structure in the center of the space. This action will insert the layer into the layer cake structure at the level that corresponds with the current time period. A second glowball is used to grab a fossil from among ten options and drop it onto the structure. This action embeds the fossil in the current sediment layer. On the east side of the display, students see an interactive clock with geological time advancing to increment each new period. Three buttons on a wireless pointer device are used to pause, play, and reset geological time. A bar graph displays the current fault tension value in real time. Students use a Wii Remote game controller, with embedded accelerometers, to generate fault events. The more vigorously that a user shakes the device, the more the fault tension will increase. Holding the device still will decrease the fault tension. When a tension threshold is exceeded, a fault event (i.e., earthquake) will occur, resulting in uplift in the layer cake structure. Fault events can be generated at any time during the building process. Subsequently erosion occurs to the uplifted portion of the structure.

During the learning activities, all students are co-present in the space, and the scenario takes advantage of the embodied nature of SMALLab. For example, the concept of fault tension is embodied in the physical act of vigorously shaking the Wii Remote game controller. In addition this gesture clearly communicates the user’s intent to the entire group. Similarly, the deliberate gesture of physically stooping to select a fossil and carrying it across the space before depositing it in the layer cake structure allows all students to observe, consider and act upon this decision as it is unfolding. Students might intervene verbally to challenge or encourage such a decision. Or they might coach a student who is struggling to take action. Having described the components of the system, we now narrate and discuss the framework that enables a class of fifteen to twenty students to participate in the scenario.

Student participation framework

The process of constructing a layer cake involves four lead roles for students: (1) the depositional environment selector, (2) the sediment layer selector, (3) the fossil record selector, and (4) the fault event generator. In figure ??? we diagram the relationship between each of these participant roles (top layer) and the physical interaction device (next layer down). The teacher typically assumes the role of geological time controller.

In the classroom, approximately fifteen to twenty students are divided into four teams of five or six students each. Three teams are in active rotation during the build process, such that they take turns serving as the action lead with each cycle of the geological clock. These teams are the (1) depositional environment team and fault event team, (2) the sediment layer team, and (3) the fossil team. The remaining students constitute the evaluation team. These “evaluator” students are tasked to monitor the build process, record the activities of action leads, and to steer the discussion during the reflection process. Students are encouraged to verbally coach their teammates during the process.

There are at least two ways in which the build process can be structure. On the one hand, the process can be purely open ended, with the depositional environment student leading the process, experimenting with the outcomes, but without a specific constraint. This is an exploratory compositional process. Alternatively, the students can reference an existing layer cake structure as a script such as the one pictured above. This is a goal directed framing where only two students have access to the original script, but all participants must work together to reconstruct the original. At the end of the build cycle, students compare their structure against the original. In this discussion we narrate the goal-directed build process.

At the beginning of each geological period, the lead “depositional environment” student examines the attributes of the source structure and selects the appropriate depositional environment or surface condition on the earth. All students see an image and hear a sonic representation of the depositional environment. Based on that selected condition, another student grabs the appropriate sedimentary rock, and drops in onto the structure. While considering the current evolutionary time period and the current depositional environment, another student grabs a fossilized animal and lays it into the sedimentary layer. If a students changes their mind, sediment and fossil layers can be replaced by another element within a given geological time period. As the geological clock finishes a cycle, the next period begins. The action lead passes their interaction device to the next teammate, and these students collaborate to construct the next layer. The rotation continues in like fashion until the layer cake is complete. In this manner, the layer cake build process unfolds as a semi-structured choreography of thought and action that is distributed across the four action leads and their teammates. The teams rotate their roles each time a new layer cake is to be constructed. The fossil students become evaluators, while the evaluators become the sediment layer team and so forth.

Storyline

The SMALLab story line scenario was created in collaboration with a cohort of high school language arts educators. The scenario addresses four primary content learning goals. Through their participation, students should gain understanding:

1. of how to summarize and sequence key plot elements
2. of how to identify themes in a story
3. of multiple perspective within story
4. of story structure and a model of rising and falling tension that creates form.

At the beginning of the activity, students study a work of literature. In this example, students studied La LLorona, a latino folk tale about a mother who drowns her children in a river after her marriage falls apart.

There are two phases to the curriculum. During phase 1, groups of students take the role of designers to create an interactive storytelling environment in SMALLab. During phase 2, groups of students interact in SMALLab to construct a multimedia storyline using the materials created by their peers in phase 1.

During phase 1, students:

• Identify the theme of the story
• Identify the perspective from which they want to tell their story
• Create audio recordings
• Create visual media
• Upload their media to the SMALLab database
• Program the interactive elements for their storyline in SMALLab

There are six elements to the interactive storyline scenario:

• The collection of story points created by the students
• The storyline structure
• The story workshop
• The storytelling station and presentation
• The theme display
• The perspective display

Groups of three or more students work together to create a storyline in SMALLab during Phase 2. One student positions the story structure within the story workshop area using the glowball. Meanwhile, another student uses the glowball to audition the sounds and images which correspond to key points in the story. These two students work together to appropriately sequence the events. A third student holds a device that responds to shaking. This student shakes the device to increase the “tension” of a particular story point. The more vigorously he or she shakes, the higher the tension will rise. In this manner, all three students work together to construct a story sequence and structure that accords with the original story.