Collaborative Research: Telling the Story - Learning Math, Science and Engineering Through Animation

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This project will explore new and potentially powerful technological teaching tools for introducing the concepts of computing and physics to children (and teachers). The goal is to broaden the class of students who are not merely exposed to but rather engaged with technology, by empowering children to express ideas with usable tools for creating stop-action and 3D-animated movies, and by developing methodologies for incorporating such tools into Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education. This effort leverages emerging public fascination for computer animation, as well as recent technological advances that have moved the graphics power of yesterday's million-dollar visualization supercomputers into every desktop PC.A proof of concept of this approach, based on stop-motion animation, was prototyped by one of the PIs, and initial trials were encouraging. In a high-school physics class for noncollege-bound seniors, students who typically skipped class were now attending, some coming even during free time to complete their movies. Through animations, students were able to critically examine their own understanding of the physics and more effectively convey that understanding to teachers. (The same technique is also being used to teach reading to 7 year olds and biology to 9 year olds, replacing book reports and lab notebooks with animated stories and documentaries.) Informed by that experience, this project will have two arms: one to develop and evaluate teaching methodology based on moviemaking (at Tufts University), the other to create new 3D computer animation tools useable in the classroom (at Princeton University). Technological teaching tools are often developed in the absence of strong educational research; in this project, the PIs will use accepted metrics (and develop new ones) to quantify the STEM learning improvement in high school physics as a result of using animations, comparing student understanding in conventional "hands-on" physics classes with those that include movie journaling. Results from this work will not only contribute to our understanding of how students learn physics and computing, but will also help bridge the student's experience and intuition with modern scientific theory. Further development of moviemaking tools will allow students to move from the jerky animation of the stop-action world to the smooth animations of modern computer graphics. Unfortunately, existing animation systems are barely usable by professionals, let alone grade-school students. This project will address that research challenge by developing inexpensive and robust 3D scanning hardware, point-and-click animation interfaces, and methods for stylized (e.g. cartoon-like) rendering of 3D animation.Broader Impacts: Anecdotal evidence from the prototype system (gathered over the last three years in five classrooms) already suggests the potential significant impacts of the work. Science-phobic students and computer-shy teachers enthusiastically argue about the underlying physics to improve their movies. Movie making gives teachers a multi-media portfolio to assess student learning and test student preconceived models. If formal evaluations agree with this experience, the results of this project have the potential to change the way students learn science at all ages, opening up a new channel to students to show their understanding and test their hypotheses. This may lead to innovations in teaching computing, math, biology, chemistry, engineering, and even story telling and literature. (Nonetheless, this study chooses an emphasis on physics education because of established metrics for evaluation in this subject.) Even more broadly, animation represents a new medium of expression - visual rather than written - that is compelling but currently limited to highly skilled professionals. The tools the PI plans to develop in this project will make animation more accessible both to children and, more generally, to everyone outside the animation industry. Making this technology more widely available has the potential to affect the way we all communicate, learn, work, and play, turning us into media developers rather than media consumers.