School: Vartan Gregorian Fox Point Elementary School
Teacher: Ellen Lynch
Audience: Kindergarten
Project: Stretching Words.
This year (and after four successful CS92 projects!)
Mrs. Lynch would like a "word stretching" program that would let students
extend words and hear how the new words sound. The goal is to give these
young students a sense of sounds, syllables and even "roots" through the
use of visual images, audio cues, and manipulables. Mrs. Lynch envisions
a program that would let a student stretch a word out,
based on something they hear or see, using some sort of engaging
point and drag interface. Possible tools include Hyperstudio,
Authorware, Director and HTML/Java.
Comments: Mrs. Lynch teaches an ESL Kindergarten class,
and so the challenges here include designing effective interfaces
for very young children who may have limited background in English.
School: The Lincoln School
Teachers: Connie Bryan
Audience: Third graders
Project: Understanding Multiplication Concepts.
Ms. Bryan, with whom we worked successfully last year on "Bridges",
thinks that a program illustrating the concept of multiplication (adding
things in groups) would be very helpful to her students. In class, she
has limited time to build arrays, usually using tiles, that represent
the rows and columns that make the area of the product. A program that
allowed students to build and manipulate arrays would be helpful.
Extending this concept,
students could also write their own multiplication problems and illustrate
them using arrays or some other sort of symbol(s). The concept of
rectangle arrays could be used to then illustrate prime numbers (which of
course cannot be made into rectangles). Another logical extension might be
permutations illustrating practical uses of multiplication in solving such
problems as "How many outfits can I make if I have four shirts and three
skirts". Active participation in the creation of mathematical problems and
solutions seems to be effective for girls.
Possible tools include Director, Authorware, and Java/HTML.
Comments: This project is a challenging gem, I think, and
the students who worked with Ms. Bryan last year found it a great
experience.
School: The Lincoln School
Teachers: Sandra Kaufman
Audience: Fourth graders
Project: The Talking Walls of Providence.
If you Google "Talking Walls" you'll see that
it's a method of teaching cultural history by revealing the
significance of walls that students see and pass everyday. Ms.
Kaufman envisions a learning game that makes use of various
walls in Providence, allowing students to explore, inquire,
and learn about ways of seeing these phenomena. A combination of
cultural anthropology, history and sociology, this computer-based
exercise would be valuable to her students. Possible tools include
Director, Authorware, and Java/HTML.
Comments: A great project that builds on a well-established
method of teaching, anchored in this community. Obviously this project
could produce a program for widespread use in RI, not to mention a
fun and innovative instructional game.
School: The Lincoln School
Teachers: Betsy Hunt
Audience: Grades 1-5
Project: Understanding the Computer. Although students
at all levels of schooling routinely use computers, Ms. Hunt notes
that her students actually know very little about how the computer
and computer networks work. She envisions a program that teaches
basic concepts (e.g. bytes, devices, network protocols) but also
helps students develop judgement concerning searching, posting,
and security. A program that could do these things in an engaging
way (and perhaps inspire interest in computer science!) would be
extremely valuable to the students at Lincoln. Possible tools
include Director and Java/HTML.
Comments: This is the first computer education project
we've had since WIRES: Inside the Internet (in 1998), and this time the
challenge is to engage students, already familiar with personal
computers and the Web, in learning about how computers work and
what some of the interesting aspects of computing might be.
School: Vartan Gregorian Fox Point Elementary School
Teacher: Claudia Pietros
Audience: Grades 3-6 Art
Project: Mrs. Pietros would like a program that surveys the
historical and cultural uses of Masks across various world cultures, such
as Native America, Africa, the Far East, and Europe. This might be a
program students would use independently as well as in a teacher-directed
whole group setting. The program would be rich in visual imagery, and
would allow for various kinds of creative manipulation, in order for
students to compare/contrast design principles and uses of masks
across cultures. Possible tools include Director, Authorware, and
Java.
Comments: The students who worked with Mrs. Pietros in
1999 found it an inspiring experience, and they produced a
wonderful program called
"Building Blast!". A new challenge to this
project will be to find creative ways to assess students' understanding
of the material in addition to presenting it in engaging ways.
School: Christopher DelSesto Middle School
Teacher: Martin Caruso
Audience: 8th-graders
Project: English Standards.
The English Standards workbook that Mr. Caruso uses with his students
has 11 lessons that the students are asked to
complete in preparation for the Rhode Island Assessment.
Lessons include answering multiple
choice questions, short answer questions, reading for comprehension,
interpretation, spelling, punctuation, usage, and some essays. A major
difficulty is that Mr. Caruso's students do not find the subject matter
stimulating. He would like to motivate some of the students with
interactive computer lessons. Students might work individually or in
groups, and the software would reinforce and motivate. Del Sesto is
located in a new building in the west end of Providence, and is considered
a "Title One" school. Possible tools include Directory, Authorware and Java.
Comments: This is a challenging and interesting opportunity to
create an innovative, appealing program to help Providence students meet
the English standards. It is also an opportunity to work with a set
of students for whom mastering English skills is often difficult.
School: The MET School (MET West)
Teacher: Brian Mills
Audience: grades 9-12
Project: The Online MET Book Review. Mr. Mills would
like a Web-based program that encourages students to review books they have
read and recommend them to other students. The MET does not
have a required reading list, though students are required to document
reading 20 books in the course of their four years at the School.
The goal here is to use peer recommendations as a motivation
for students to read and talk about books. As teachers have found
that the avid readers are a little shy about speaking up in school
assemblies, a virtual forum might make this task less intimidating.
Possible tools include HTML/Java and HTML with a scripting language
like (but not limited to) Perl.
Comments: The MET is an innovative approach to
schooling in Providence. Although issues of authentication
and database structure will require some work in this project,
the primary challenge is to create a tool that engages and
inspires a book culture among students who are pursuing
individualized education plans.
School: The MET School (Peace St. Campus)
Teacher: Kim Barsamian
Audience: 10th graders
Project:
Ms. Barsamian's students do a lot of writing for school and at their
internships. The writing ranges from research to creative writing. She
would like her students to have an interactive resource to help them
with their composition. She finds it difficult to meet the needs of
all of her students because they all work on different projects, at
different times, with different degrees of understanding. She envisions
a program that could lead students through a series of different types of
writing, with emphasis on structured composition and good examples. If
actual writers could read from their own work, she thinks this kind of
modeling could bring writing to life for her students.
The purpose of this type of program is to give students some independence
with their writing. If they are able to easily access writing help and
instruction they are far more likely to do it on their own. Ms. Barsamian
notes that many of her students are very comfortable with using a computer
but not so comfortable with writing; figuring a way to combine the
task of writing with the comfort of the computer would definitely help
her students' writing skills. Possible tools include Director,
Authorware and HTML/Java.
Comments: This is a great project that could have high
impact and widespread use. Encouraging careful writing (as opposed to
formulaic writing) using a computer program is a major design challenge,
but working with the MET provides an opportunity for innovation and
experiment.
School: The Virtual Medical School and
Brown University
Teacher: Steve Smith
Audience: Medical Students
Project: The Virtual Medical Practice.
Brown is one of the 52 schools worldwide involved in
the Virtual Medical School Project, based at the University of
Dundee, and Professor Smith is particularly interested in
structuring the experience of students in such a "school" using
the idea of the "virtual practice." He would like to develop a
program that would allow students to "see" a patient (who would
present with particular statistics and a narration of some sort),
and write a report suggesting what may be the problem(s). The
program would then provide intelligent
feedback on this report, noting errors in the diagnosis and
suggesting concepts and areas of medical knowledge that might
be further studied. The program might also include a
second visit by the patient, to allow the student to revisit
and revise her/his report. Possible tools include Director,
Authorware and Java.
Comments: This project can draw on the lessons we've
learned from the two patient-interviewing projects we've done
since 1998, and the challenge will be to create an engaging
and effective program that is versatile enough to accommodate
a variety of patients/modules.
School: University of Oregon
Teacher: Dev Sinha
Audience: Undergraduates in Linear Algebra
Project: In his linear algebra course, Professor Sinha
has an innovative way of teaching affine transformations in the
plane that
involves the introduction of fractals. Trying to develop students'
geometric intuitions about these transformations he introduces
fractals encoded by collections of affine transformations.
The encoding is essentially through the fact that such
transformations actually determine the
self-similarities of the fractal. Another way of saying this is
that by identifying different subsets of the fractal image that
"cover" the fractal, one actually defines the fractal uniquely.
The project calls for the creation of a program to be accessed via
the Web that allows students to visualize affine transformations
and to generate fractal images by manipulating parameters of the
transformations.
The software produced will not only be a teaching tool but a tool
for creating fractal art.
The likely environment for this project is HTML/Java.
Comments: For students interested in mathematics, this is
a fascinating project. You will be implementing procedural code
provided by Professor Sinha, but the questions of how best to
design and manage the interactions in the program are quite
challenging, and the the drama of fractal images provides
great opportunities for an effective engaging program. The
fact that you'll be working at a distance with Professor
Sinha, who was at Brown until last year, adds a further
challenge the design and testing process.
School: Brown University School of Medicine
Teacher: Mark Aloia
Audience: Community Patients
Project: Sleep Apnea Intervention.
Dr. Aloia has developed an intervention to improve treatment adherence in
patients with Obstructive Sleep Apnea. The intervention is based on
psychological theory, is interactive, and is designed to get patients
to think
about the barriers they have to treatment. The intervention is
currently scripted for clinicians to give to patients in two
45-minute blocks. He would like to make the intervention into an
interactive program that would provide users
with personalized and otherwise intelligent feedback regarding their
disorder based on the interaction. An addition feature since last
year is that Dr. Aloia wants to use the program to monitor
adherence (remotely) in all participants over the first week of
the intervention.
Possible tools Director/Flash, and HTML/Java.
Comments: Aside from its obvious value for patient
education, this is an interesting and challenging
project both from the point of view of HCI and
medical informatics.
School: Women and Infants Hospital
Teacher: Jeff Peipert
Audience: OB/GYN Patients
Project: Computer-based Counseling in STD Prevention.
Sexually transmitted infections are an important public health problem,
and young women are disproportionately affected by STDs. Male condoms
are effective methods of prevention, but many men are unwilling to use
condoms. The objective of Dr. Peipert's randomized trial, in which
this program would play a vital role, is to evaluate the
effectiveness of a computer-based counseling intervention to promote the
use of a diaphragm and a microbicide as a female-controlled method of
STD prevention compared to standard male condom promotion. Six hundred
women will be recruited and followed for two years for incident STDs and
reported use of the diaphragm and male condoms. If this intervention is
effective, it could be exported to schools and other community sites in
the U.S. and beyond for STD and HIV prevention. Because of the Web-based
data collection aspect of the program, possible tools are limited
to HTML/Java, or other back-ends with HTML interfaces.
Challenge: This is a challenging project with very high
potential impact. In addition to making a program for use in the
above described intervention, Dr. Peipert would like the program to
be modifiable, and able to collect data regarding demographic and
reproductive risk factors (e.g. age, race/ethnicity, education, history
of STDs, history of unplanned pregnancy, contraceptive use, sexual
history, etc.)