Daniel Pauw

Seeing the unseen learner: designing and using social media to recognize children's science dispositions in action

This paper describes the development of ScienceKit, a mobile, social media application to promote childrens scientific inquiry. We deployed ScienceKit in Kitchen Chemistry (KC), an informal science program where children learn about scientific inquiry through cooking. By iteratively integrating design and implementation, this study highlights the affordances of social media that facilitate childrens trajectories of disposition development in science learning. We illuminate how the technological and curricular design decisions made in ScienceKit and KC constrain or expand the types of data we can collect and the actionable insights about learning we can recognize as both educators and researchers. This study offers suggestions for how information gleaned from social media tools can be employed to strengthen our understanding of learning in practice, and help educators better recognize the rich actions that learners undertake, which may be easily overlooked in face-to-face situations.

It helped me do my science.: a case of designing social media technologies for children in science learning

In this paper, we present the design evolution of two social media (SM) tools: Scientific INQuiry (SINQ), which transformed into ScienceKit. We detail our motivations for using SM tools in science learning and the design decisions we made over a 2year, designbased research project. Our designs grew from our experiences using SM tools in the field and codesigning these systems with children. Our longitudinal case study and design narrative contribute to our understanding of the design and use of SM tools to support childrens scientific inquiry. Specifically, we detail (1) the affordances and constraints we gleaned from the design evolution of SINQ to ScienceKit, (2) the potential of SM to guide learning behaviors, and (3) the role of SM for children and the community of adults and peers who support them.

Selfies for science: collaborative configurations around ScienceKit

In this paper, we detail our initial analyses of the ways in which youth engage in collaborative learning using ScienceKit, a mobile, social media application designed to support scientific inquiry in informal learning contexts. We focus on the ways in which ScienceKit orients small groups in different configurations of collaborative work, as they engage in informal learning activities.

Science Everywhere: Designing Public, Tangible Displays to Connect Youth Learning Across Settings

A major challenge in education is understanding how to connect learning experiences across settings (e.g., school, afterschool, and home) for youth. In this paper, we introduce and describe the participatory design process we undertook to develop Science Everywhere (SE), which is a sociotechnical system where children share their everyday science learning via social media. Public displays installed throughout the neighborhood invite parents, adults, peers, and community members to interact with childrens ideas to better develop connections for learning across settings. Our case study of community interactions with the public displays illuminate how these technologies encouraged behaviors such as the noticing of childrens ideas, recognition of people in the neighborhood, and bridging to new learning opportunities for youth.

Supporting Environmental Stewards' Needs with Technology

Within the context of a program focused on learning concepts and practices for keeping watersheds healthy and then completing community-based projects, we explore ways that NatureNet, a prototype mobile and web-based technology, can support volunteer watershed stewards. Using a mixed methods approach, our analysis of the experiences of 50 volunteers over a 16-month study period revealed that two of their strongest needs are: (1) place-based information about the location in which they are stewards, and (2) support for navigating resource challenges, including information about watersheds, tools (both digital and physical), introductions to others, and financial support in order to complete their projects. Using a combination of theory and iterative design thinking, we describe design strategies to address these needs. This study informs research beyond our specific context by providing an approach to technology design that supports development of community-driven nature projects.

Connecting Affinity Spaces to Places and Back: A Look at Pokemon Go

Designers of learning tools and spaces have focused on understanding learner interests and the features of online spaces (also known as affinity spaces) that allow them to share and collaborate. Pokemon Go provides a practical case to observe potential new connections between the affinity spaces and learning in place-based settings. In this study, we look at design considerations for connecting learning in online affinity spaces to physical places. We discuss learner usage of Pokemon Go, learner designs for similar technology and impacts on interaction between place, affinity space and self. Specifically, we show that learners desire connecting affinity space learning to place by using finely-detailed, context-sensitive connections so that they can reflect place back to their affinity space visibly and possibly tangibly. Interestingly, social interactions serve to strengthen the bonds between people and interest in the physical places and learners do not require an extensive technological social feature.

Understanding Data Providers in a Global Scientific Data Hub

In the absence of systematic knowledge about the characteristics and practices of data collections, successful data hubs and other platforms that support collaborative data sharing are unlikely to be designed and built. We begin to fill this gap by performing an in depth case study of a global scientific data hub -- the Encyclopedia of Life -- in which we analyzed the organizational-level identities of 259 data providers and developing a typology of the identities, including: Venerable organizations, Repositories, Citizen science initiatives, Social media platforms, Education communities, and Subsidiaries. This study will provide data aggregation and integration technology designers with background information on data collections.