Bertram C. Bruce: Student projects

LIS 391: Literacy in the Information Age: Sp 04, Sp 03, Fa 02, Sp 02, Fa 01 (LIS 450 NL: New Literacies), Sp 01, Sp 00

LIS 450 LTL: Learning Technologies: Fa00

LIS 450 ITL/CI 407 ITL: Inquiry Teaching and Learning: Sp 96, Sp 98, Sp 00

CI 490 EIT: Evaluation of Information Technologies: Fa 98

CI 335 / CI 317: Computer Assisted Instruction: Fa 99

CI 407: Su 99

UCSD TEP 231: Su 97; Su 99.

SATEX: Su 97

EdPsy 387: Su 98

Service learning opportunities

Global SchoolNet's Internet Projects Registry of K-12 projects

The Mathematics, Science, and Technology Education Office

The University of Hong Kong Libraries has a good summary of ways Internet resources can support learning

Learning Technologies Timeline. This timeline has been created by students at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, who were enrolled in courses on Literacy in the Information Age, Learning Technologies, or Computer Assisted Instruction. Each entry has a link to a student-created web page providing more details about the event; in some cases the page describes a sequence of events leading up to or following from the cited event. An earlier version of the site was known as the Educational Technology Timeline. There is more about the timeline in the following article:

Bruce, B. C. (2001, May). Constructing a once and future history of learning technologies.Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 44(8).

White Papers on Technology Issues for Educators. During the Sp semester of99, students in the course Ethical and Policy Issues in Information Technologies, worked in teams, to develop a set of white papers on issues centrally affecting the ways in which new information and communication technologies are changing schools today. These White Papers have been edited, added to, and commented upon bu successive classes to become a widely-cited resource for educators.

• An Educator's Guide to Access Issues
• An Educators' Guide to Credibility and Web Evaluation
• An Educator's Guide to Free Speech vs. Censorship
• An Educator's Guide to Privacy
• An Educator's Guide to Commercialism
• An Educator's Guide to Intellectual Property, Copyright, and Plagiarism
• An Educator's Guide to Computer Crime and Technology Misuse

Wildwood Junior High School Case Studies. During the Fa semester of98, students in a course entitled, Evaluation of Information Technologies, worked in teams to evaluate the "Learning with Computer Technologies" program in a simulated school, "Wildwood Junior High School." These are their reports.

Individual evaluation studies. In the same course, students conducted formative evaluations of their own projects.

Birding Break(sm), simulated birding trips to popular North American destinations, by Donald Crockett

Some possible projects

• What's happening with intellectual property in the digital age? Think about music and movies, but also e-books, software, and other media. An interesting case is the patenting of our own genes. A project could review the technical and political issues for some aspect of this area.
• Could everyone become a programmer? See intentional software.
• How did the progressive education movement of the early-mid 20th century think about technologies? You might be surprised at how sophisticated their view of materials and learning was. And we have the complete archives of the progressive education association right here in our library.
• Speaking of libraries, what is our own undergraduate library doing with its Learning Commons? Studying that, or helping with it, could be a project.
• Get involved with helping young people learn. We have ongoing projects at Booker T Washington School, Urbana Middle School, and in Chicago and East St. Louis.
• Make podcasts about Literacy in the Information Age. These could be short introductions to the topics we're discussing, organized around questions or technologies. Build a resource site for the course.
• Get involved with the Inquiry Page or Inquiry Labs projects. Do user testing, or create an Inquiry Page for Dummies. Help re-design it to make it a better system.
• Learn about social bookmarking tools (e.g., del.icio.us). We're developing here in GSLIS a cool, new tool that allows people to pull content from social bookmark sites into their own web pages. You could learn about new technologies as they're being developed.
• Come to the Community Inquiry Research Group. You'll hear many new ideas and projects that you might like to work with, whether for the course project or not.
• Analyze common themes across "new media courses". See Courses in Cyberculture.
• Produce a white paper for one of the course modules.
• Develop an Open Directory category.
• Create a literacy site for a school library or media center.
• Create a glossary for information technology (cf. Raymond Williams).
• Build a timeline.
• Study the use of some new information technology (e.g., Napster, robotics, ubiquitous computing...).
• Conduct a case study of learning

Network Projects

The term "Network projects" has been used to refer to curriculum units in which several classrooms join together to investigate some issue. Often this means that diversity across classrooms becomes an integral and positive component of classroom activities. The classrooms need not be at the same grade level or even the same subject.

There are several guidelines from previous network projects, which might be useful. Also, take a look at "Organizing and Facilitating Telecollaborative Projects,"  by Judi Harris and "Organizing Electronic Network-Based Instructional Interactions: Successful Strategies and Tactics," by Michael L. Waugh , James A. Levin , and Kathleen Smith.

Inquiry-based Projects

Check out the Inquiry Page to see some example classroom projects and to get some ideas about inquiry-based learning.

Some students may choose to work on the Inquiry Page itself.

Some UIUC projects that you might join

Biology Workbench. A computational interface and environment that permits anyone with a Web browser to use bioinformatics for research, teaching, or learning.

Chickscope. Students raise chicken embryos in the classroom and obtain magnetic resonance images by controlling an MRI machine through the Internet. This is a collaboration between UIUC and classrooms for grades K-12. Illinois Chickscope is a professional development program using the Chickscope approach for teachers in Illinois. See news release on Chickscope.

Discoveries. A series of CD-ROMs. Each includes a 360-degree panorama, a Visitors Center with maps, multimedia books, artwork, and other materials. There are also various activities and extended project ideas. Students have an electronic journal that they can use to write about what they're learning. The journal includes a camera for taking photographs of anything on the CD. There are currently four disks available for Mac or Windows: The Nature Connection, Into the Forest, SkyHigh, and In the Desert.

Plants, Pathogens, and People. The relation among plants, plant pathogens, and humans is often poorly understood, despite the fact that it has had enormous consequences throughout history. This project, through ACES, seeks to enhance agriculture literacy in college and high school classes through video, conferencing, and the web.

Science Network News. An interactive newsletter devoted to dialogue with children about their science questions.

Physics Outreach. A set of projects by the Physics Department, including Physics Van and Operation Physics, designed to enhance the learning of physics in K-12 classrooms.

Project SEARCH (Science Education and Research for Children). Undergraduates work with teachers to promote hands-on science learning. Students enroll for credit in through C&I, Physiology, Bioengineering, or Chemistry.

Calibrated Peer Review

Calibrated Peer Review is an idea, which developed in science education, but appears to have jumped up a level with web-based assignment submission. In essence, it facilitates peer review of assignments while avoiding some of the well-known pitFas of that. It could be especially useful in large enrollment classes which have open-response assignments and in web-based courses. Versions of it could be done at any grade level.

From the UCLA website on CPR ...

"CPR is a program, for networked computers, that enables frequent writing assignments without any increase in instructor work. In fact, CPR can reduce the time an instructor now spends reading and assessing student writing. CPR offers instructors the choice of creating their own writing assignments or using the rapidly expanding assignment library. Although CPR stems from a science-based model, CPR has the exciting feature that it is discipline independent and level independent. When young children first begin to write a few sentences, they can use CPR profitably, and yet the same program serves college and university students as well as graduate and professional students."

There's a good tutorial and a ppt show on CPR. I would interpret "writing assignment" here to include writing a computer program, constructing a web page, making a diagram, designing an experiment, composing a piece of music, etc., not just the traditional essay. A project could be to implement CPR for a course and study its use.