A Technology Infused Science Summer Camp to Prepare Student Leaders in 8th Grade Classrooms Youwen Ouyang
Katherine Hayden
Computer Science and Information Systems California State University San Marcos, CA
College of Education California State University San Marcos, CA
[email protected]
[email protected] Lamar University held one-day computing academies where female and minority middle school students work in teams of two or three in completing hands-on activities [6]. A 5-day summer workshop called I*Wear was offered by the Hong Kong Polytechnic University to use wearable computing and e-textiles to teach middle school students about technology and computing in a context that is futuristic, innovative, and creative [10]. The “Build It, Trust It, Use It” project at the Northern Kentucky University offers a series of three eight-week workshops on Sunday afternoons for selected recent immigrant families of middle schoolers to build computers together [7]. The “Digispired” project at Virginia State University offers a 3-year program for 89 middle school students where they meet two weeks during summer and 10 – 15 Saturdays during the year to learn about programming, computer graphics, and animation [8].
ABSTRACT Technology-enhanced science curriculum has potential for introducing fundamental computing concepts to adolescents. iQUEST (investigations for Quality Understanding and Engagement for Students and Teachers) is designed to transform middle school science teachers into advocates for technology being a critical part of student learning. It targets 7th and 8th grade science classrooms that serve high percentages of Hispanic students. To prepare student leaders in iQUEST teachers’ classrooms, a group of 24 Hispanic students from project schools were invited to participate in a weeklong technology infused science summer camp. These students would continue on in project classrooms where teachers receive intensive technology training and support over the next year. This paper describes the camp activities and reports how the camp impacted students’ aptitude and attitude toward technology and science.
However, afterschool programs or summer camps have the inherent disadvantage of the number and types of students they can reach as well as the contact hours each student can receive. Excitements and knowledge gained from summer and afterschool activities can be diminished over the next few months if they are isolated from regular classroom experience. Inside middle schools, technology related electives often focus more on keyboarding, Microsoft Office, and Internet searching. Movement for integration of technology in regular curriculum has been largely promoted by Education Technology faculty who focus on pedagogy instead of fundamental computing concepts underlying hardware, software, and applications. The ACM K-12 Task Force Curriculum Committee recognized that the lack of integration of computer science into the K-12 curriculum played an important role in the serious shortage of information technologists at all levels [4].
Categories and Subject Descriptors K.3.2 [Computing Milieux]: Computers and Education – Computer and Information Science Education
General Terms Design, Economics, Experimentation, Human Factors.
Keywords Computing foundations, middle school, science curriculum, summer camp.
1. INTRODUCTION To broaden participation in computing by diverse populations, the computing community has long recognized the need for outreach activities for students at the middle school level [2]. The “Gr8 Designs for Gr8 Girls” project at University of Toronto offers one-day programs where girls rotate through four different activities that focus on design and creativity [5]. The “Increasing Student Participation in Research Development” program at
The investigations for Quality Understanding and Engagement for Students and Teachers (iQUEST) project at California State University San Marcos (CSUSM) targets 7th and 8th grade science classrooms that serve high percentages of Hispanic students and low socioeconomic populations. It is designed to deliver learning modules that are rich in both computing and science content for these students through science classrooms. The computing curriculum for iQUEST modules includes Level I (Foundations of Computer Science) and Level II (Computer Science in the Modern World) of the ACM K-12 Model Curriculum.
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The main iQUEST components are shown in Figure 1. Professional development activities are designed for science teachers to embed Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in their curriculum. With support from computing,
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videoconferencing allow students and teachers to interact with each other as well as ICT-savvy science experts. Outreach activities will focus on career education for counselors, students and their parents. High school media arts classes will visit local technology businesses and produce career education videos to be used in outreach activities. These videos will be accessible on the project Web site.
education, and science experts, teachers collaboratively design classroom activities that engage their students in the use of ICT to support their learning of science. Fundamental computing concepts are explained to teachers and students in the context of the adopted ICT-enhanced resources. Support for teachers and students are provided by CSUSM students for classroom implementation of iQUEST modules. Online collaboration and
iQUEST Development • Science Curriculum • ICT Resources • Moodle Sites Summer Academy • ICT Concepts • iQUEST Modules • Enhanced Pedagogy
iQUEST Delivery
Outreach
• Classroom Support • Online Collaboration • Videoconferencing
• Career Education Videos • Counselor Workshops • Special Events
Lesson Study
Summer Camp
• Observation • Discussion/Reflection • Action Research
• ICT/STEM Activities • Leadership/mentoring • Career Exploration
Figure 1Main Components of iQUEST
2.2 Camp Overview
In May 2009, iQUEST welcomed seventeen 8th grade teachers to a one-day orientation where teachers were introduced to each other, project leadership, and the main components of the project. These teachers committed to the project for two years. Professional development for teachers includes a 3-day Academy during summers of 2009 and 2010 as well as two annual collaborative lesson study rotations and monthly afterschool workshops throughout the school year. In addition, the project provides continuous support for teachers as they design and implement iQUEST modules in their classrooms. This paper focuses on a weeklong student summer camp held in July 2009 to prepare student leaders in project classrooms. Section 2 describes the student demographics in the summer camp, the overview of camp activities, and highlights of activities that integrate computing and science curriculum. Section 3 reports on the analyses of two surveys administered to students at the beginning and end of the camp. The concluding remarks are presented in Section 4.
The iQUEST Summer Camp is designed to produce student leaders in project classrooms who are excited and knowledgeable about using technology to support their learning of science. A guiding principle for iQUEST is that technology must be introduced in the context of science content to make its way to classrooms. Although the 2009 iQUEST Summer Camp served only incoming 8th graders because the iQUEST focus for the 2009/2010 school year is 8th grade, iQUEST is scheduled to also work with 7th graders in the 2010/2011 school year. Therefore, we were looking for a theme that could be applied to both grade levels. The Science Content Standards for California K-12 Public Schools [3] includes an “Investigation and Experimentation” strand throughout all grade levels. The National Science Education Standards [12] also identify “Unifying Concepts and Processes” as a strand that transcends disciplinary and grade boundaries. Therefore, we identified “Scientific Observations and Process” as the theme for our summer camps. Students learn what constitutes being good observers in a variety of venues through activities that require them to record scientific data accurately. One key objective for the camp is for students to develop an appreciation for how technology enhances science discovery. Students are constantly engaged in activities that use technology to assist data recording, visual record keeping, organization, and scientific measurements.
2. WEEKLONG SUMMER CAMP 2.1 Demographics All students who were invited to the iQUEST Student Summer Camp were Hispanic with 50% girls and 50% boys. There were 12 students from each of the two school districts closest to campus and the two largest partner school districts involved in the project. Each of these districts has an average of about 50% Hispanic students in their schools. Teachers invited applications from students who were considered would most likely to benefit from the experience as well as likely to be committed for the entire week experience. Students were required to submit a short essay for why they wanted to attend as part of the application. Site administrators made the final selection and a waiting list was created in case of attrition. A family orientation was scheduled and offered in both English and Spanish.
The 2009 iQUEST Summer Camp was held on the campus of CSUSM from Monday, July 13 through Friday, July 17. The university campus was chosen to be the location for the camp to provide students with state-of-the-art technology experiences in university science labs and classrooms. Many students had never been to a university campus before, so hosting the camp at the university helped these students see college as within reach. Buses were arranged to pick up and drop off students from three schools because transportation to campus can be difficult and time
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for camp instructors to post camp schedules, online resources, and reflection prompts. Each student received an account to access the camp Moodle shell, not only during the camp day in the computer lab, but also from home. This presented the opportunity for teachers to share with students the basic components of computer networks and organization of Internet elements. At the end of each day, students were asked to use the Moodle Blog feature to write reflectively about their experiences and share them with others as Web content. The exercises of including images, sound, text, and links in students’ blog entries provided the opportunity to discuss Web page design, hypermedia and common formats for data transmission.
consuming for some families. Camp activities started at 9:00 am and ended at 3:00 pm. Throughout the camp, students experienced the fun and excitement of science in a shared community of peer learners. Students worked in pairs to observe and classify live crabs that were captured by camp teachers the day before. (Teachers returned the crabs to the ocean at the end of the day.) Group activities were designed for students to use probes to measure the electromagnetic spectrum. A videoconference with an imaging scientist from Rochester Institute of Technology guided students through the process of taking apart a consumable camera. Within the eye dissection lab, students participated in both virtual and physical dissection of a cow/sheep eye to investigate and observe the geometric shapes and angles associated with its anatomy and physiology. Geocaching took students through an interesting adventure on campus with the help of Global Positioning System (GPS) receivers. A career panel was also presented to students where professional men and women shared the use of technology in their daily work. Each day ended with students writing their reflection as blog entries.
For the crab activity, each student pair was assigned a live crab to create detailed observations of the crab that would allow others to identify the crab by studying the observation notes. The observations then were collected and distributed among student pairs. Prior to the distribution, teachers and students discussed the identification system for the records and crabs as well as different distribution algorithms to ensure no student pair would be assigned their own observation record and crab. Once students received their assigned observation records, they rotated through all the stations and attempted to match the observation record with the right crab. This prompted students to apply the concepts of logic and set to problem solving. When a match between crab and observation was reached, both the pair that found the match and the pair that recorded the observation were rewarded. This reward system motivated students to carefully describe key characteristics that would distinguish their crab from the rest.
It is important to note that instructors for the summer camp were science teachers, not computer scientists or technologists, to reflect the reality of middle school science classrooms. The team included two high school, and one middle school teacher, each with a different expertise in science including physics, life science and physical science. Project leadership worked closely with instructors to identify technology resources and to help teachers integrate appropriate components of the ACM K-12 Model Curriculum into science activities. The following section highlights some of such components.
Geocaching was the most popular camp activity for the students. GPS receivers drew students’ attention to computing technology beyond standard desktop and laptop computers. Students learned about how technology advancements and the system of satellites provided positioning data related to longitude and latitude. As students traveled around campus with their GPS receivers to find cache containers hidden by camp instructors, they recognized the delay of GPS reading caused by communication between the receivers and the satellites. The fact that two people standing next to each other would get different readings on their receivers if they had come from different directions, prompted discussions of computers as models of intelligent behavior and what distinguishes humans from computers. A campus map was given to students so that they could strategize the shortest path to get to the proximity of each cache container. Students were also asked to place containers and provide clear step-by-step directions to help others locate their “treasure”. This process allowed students to gain insights into algorithms writing.
2.3 Computing Concepts in Science Activities Marc Prensky, a frequent speaker at K-12 education conferences, recommends that teachers rethink their strategies and pedagogy to meet the needs of the “digital native” students [13]. Technology has been introduced to teachers through the use of project based, real world activities where experiences are often shared in online environments such as wikis, blogs and online communities [1]. A transformed classroom environment is to be rich in technology experiences and provide immediate classroom access to information [14]. Unfortunately, computer science education has not been able to ride on the wave of technology integration in classrooms to promote understanding of fundamental computing concepts. The following summer camp activities demonstrate how technology integration in science can present engaging opportunities for computer science education as described in the ACM K-12 Model Curriculum. The key is to provide necessary content knowledge in computing concepts to teachers so that they can apply such knowledge during teachable moments throughout the school year.
3. IMPACT ANALYSES To assess the impact of the Summer Camp activities on students’ attitude toward science and technology, two surveys were administered both at the beginning and end of the iQUEST Summer Camp week. The Test of Science Related Attitudes (TOSRA) survey [9] contained 28 items related to student attitudes toward science. The Information and Communication Technology Attitude (ICTA) survey focused on attitudes toward technology integrated instruction and technology in general. It contained 49 questions. For each question, a five point Likert scale was utilized with 1 being strongly disagree and 5 being strongly agree. Some questions were worded positively while
Moodle [11] is an open source course management system that has been widely adopted by many universities and school districts to support online collaboration among teachers and students. Currently, most iQUEST partner districts do not have any course management system in place for their teachers, and the ones that do, have had little acceptance due to lack of training. iQUEST hosts Moodle for project teachers and creates a Moodle shell for each participating teacher to implement for student learning activities. A Moodle shell was created for the 2009 summer camp
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others were worded negatively. When calculating the score to represent a student’s overall attitude, reverse coded items were rescored to ensure that a participant’s higher score corresponded to positive attitude. Since ICTA has many more questions than TOSRA, we decided to divide the overall score for each student by the number of questions to allow same scales for comparison. A score close to 3 indicates the student felt neutral about science or technology but a score close to 5 indicates strong interest toward science or technology. There were 12 boys and 12 girls in the camp program. A randomly generated ID was assigned to each student so that the scores on TOSRA and ICTA could be compared. Figure 2 compares the pre and post TOSRA scores for every girl in the camp. Each dot on the line reflects an average TOSRA score for one student. Similarly, Figure 3 compares the pre and post TOSRA scores for every boy in the camp. The pre and post ICTA scores for girls and boys are compared in Figures 4 and 5 respectively. Scores in all four charts were arranged according to the ascending order of student IDs. As a result, the first pair of dots on Figure 2 and the first pair of dots on Figure 4 belong to the same girl. Two boys’ responses for TOSRA were not completed properly. We decided not to include their scores for ICTA in Figure 5 for it to be comparable to Figure 3. One boy’s pre and post TOSRA scores were both below 3 and, therefore, were not shown in Figure 3.
Figure 4 Pre & Post ICTA Scores for Girls
Figure 5 Pre & Post ICTA Scores for Boys Due to the small size of our sample, we have been advised by our external evaluator to present the data descriptively rather than inferentially. Most student scores indicate a positive impact on their attitude toward science as well as interest and competency in technology as a result of attending the summer camp. There was one noticeable negative change of scores on TOSRA and two noticeable negative changes of scores on ICTA. Student TOSRA scores and gains seemed to follow a similar pattern as their ICTA scores and gains. Students scoring high on TOSRA also scored high on ICTA. Students whose scores dropped on TOSRA also dropped on ICTA. The only exception is the second to last girl in the charts.
Figure 2 Pre & Post TOSRA Scores for Girls
Factor analysis of the ICTA indicates that the survey contains several subgroups of questions. The largest proportion of ICTA questions were based on a “computer competency” factor. Results for competency questions mirrored the overall scale, with about half a standard deviation increase overall from pre to post surveys. However, questions related to career interest showed no significant differences. These results were consistent with focus group conversations held near the end of the camp by the external evaluator. Students expressed appreciation for the exposure to technology tools, but in discussing their career objectives, they often cited long-standing interests that had existed prior to the camp experience. Often these interests were influenced by prior relationships with parents or siblings. It is likely that a brief camp experience is not sufficient to have a dramatic influence on most students’ career goals. Ongoing evaluation of the project will track camp participants and other students to identify factors in
Figure 3 Pre & Post TOSRA Scores for Boys
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[3] Bruton, S. and Ong, F. editors Science Content Standards for California Public Schools, Kindergarten Through Grade Twelve, California Department of Education (CDE) Press DOI=http://www.cde.ca.gov/BE/ST/SS/documents/sciencest nd.pdf
the iQUEST project that may be salient to influencing career interests among middle school students.
4. CONCLUSIONS The 2009 iQUEST Summer Camp confirmed the premise for the iQUEST project that middle school science curriculum presents excellent opportunities to integrate various components of the ACM K-12 Model Curriculum. The integration of computer science education and science activities as illustrated in Section 2.3 provided evidence that, with proper support, science teachers can become advocates for both computing concepts and technology related careers. The iQUEST project will continue to follow the students from the summer camp throughout the school year. As these students participate in project activities in their science classrooms, we will be able to further study the impact of the summer camp activities on their leadership in adapting technology to support learning. Classroom observations will provide the opportunity to closely look at the classroom environment created by the project teachers. The TOSRA and ICTA surveys will also be administered to all students in project classrooms at the beginning and end of the school year. Such data will allow comparison of the impact of a yearlong intervention with that of the summer camp experience.
[4] Computer Science Teacher Association (CSTA), A Model Curriculum for K-12 Computer Science: Final Report by the ACM K-12 Task Force Curriculum Committee, 2nd ed. October 2003, DOI=http://www.csta.acm.org/Curriculum/sub/ACMK12CS Model.html. [5] Craig, M. and Horton, D. “Gr8 Designs for Gr8 Girls: A Middle-School Program and Its Evaluation”, in Proceedings of 2009 SIGCSE, March 3 – 7, Chattanooga, Tennesse pp 221 – 225 [6] Doerschuk, P., Liu, J., Mann, J. 2009 “INSPIRED Computing Academies for Middle School Students: Lessons Learned”, in Proceedings of 2009 Tapia, April 1 – 4, Portland, Oregon, pp 52 – 57 [7] Doyle, M., Kirby, K. G., Newell, G. 2008 “Engaging Constructions: Family-Based Computing Experiences for Immigrant Middle school Students”, in Proceedings of 2008 SIGCSE, March 12 – 15, Portland, Oregon, pp 58 – 62
5. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
[8] Javidi, G., Sheybani, E. 2009 “DIGISPIRED: Digital Inspiration for Interactive Game Design and Programming” Journal of Computing Science in Colleges, Vol. 24, No. 3, pp 144 – 150
The iQUEST project is funded by the National Science Foundation (DRL 0833753). The opinions expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not represent the views of NSF.
[9] Joyce, B. A. and Farenga, S. J. 1999 “Informal Science Experience, Attitudes, Future Interest in Science, and Gender of High-ability Student: An Exploratory Study”, School Science and Mathematics Vol. 99, No. 8, pp 431 – 437
Talbot Bielefeldt and Greg Sampson-Gruener, Senior Research Associates at the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE), are the external evaluators for the iQUEST project. The authors wish to thank them for their valuable input in data analyses and interpretation. Special thanks go to camp instructors Jorge Hirmas, Traves Oneill, and Kimberly White as well as the wonderful camp assistants, Elizabeth Montes and Antonio Sanchez. Both Elizabeth and Antonio are Hispanic students from the Computer Science and Information Systems Department at CSUSM. They not only provided valuable technical support but also were excellent role models for the kids.
[10] Lau, W., Ngai, G., Chan, S., and Cheung J. “Learning Programming through Fashion and Design: A Pilot Summer Course in Wearable Computing for Middle School Students”, in Proceedings of 2009 SIGCSE, March 3 – 7, Chattanooga, Tennessee, pp 504 – 508 [11] Moodle, DOI=http://moodle.org/ [12] National Committee on Science Education Standards and Assessment, National Science Education Standards, National Research Council, 1996
6. REFERENCES [1] Boss, S. and Krauss, J. 2007 Reinventing Project-based Learning, International Society for Technology in Education, Eugene, OR
[13] Prensky, M. 2001 “Digital Natives Digital Immigrants”, On the Horizon, Vol. 9, No. 5 MCB University Press, October 2001
[2] Broadening Participation in Computing Research and Education: Report of Computing Research Association Workshop on Broadening Participation (October 2004), DOI=http://www.cra.org/Activities/workshops/broadening.p articipation/report.html
[14] Warlick, D. F. 2004, Redefining Literacy for the 21st Century, Linworth Publishing Inc., Worthington, Ohio
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