Using Wide-Spread Collaboration to Motivate Innovation and Creativity

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The goal of this project is to develop a new environment for collaboration in creative projects and to promote creativity and innovation in IT problem solving among disadvantaged youth. The new environment is a wiki-based authoring toolkit, called the Briefcase, that will guide students through the use of various software packages and allow them to share and discuss with others locally and over the Internet. The intent of the Briefcase concept is to extend the functionality of the RoboBook product currently under development at Tufts to include the scalability of a Wiki-like backbone. Once the software has been designed, we will develop instructional content for it as well. The idea is to provide students with an authoring environment (like Word or PowerPoint) that helps students 1. learn how to use various software packages; 2. keep track of what they are doing through blogs, pictures, and movies; 3. discuss and team with others (locally and remotely) to problem solve; and 4. share what they develop with others around the world. Further, the Briefcase will allow the Learning Centers to recruit excellent mentors that are not necessarily software experts. The idea is that a user could ?check out a Briefcase? for a project in a software package (e.g., Scratch). She opens the Briefcase to an instruction manual, complete with movies, pictures, and interactive pages. She then starts to move into the open-ended design of her project, with the included design brief providing scaffolding for her design. At this point the tool becomes more of a diary and note-taking environment (where notes can include pictures, voice, and movies). As she completes her design, she creates her final presentation within the Briefcase that is then shared with others on the web.Broader Impact: The hybrid technology being delivered to children in different cities in different socioeconomic conditions, can make a real impact in improving science education opportunities for disadvantaged youth. This work could also inform new directions for textbooks of the future.