DIP: The Science Through Technology Enhanced Play (STEP)

在这个网络学习：转变教育DIP（发展和实施）项目中，pi正在调查如何利用小学生的具象游戏来帮助他们理解科学现象（例如，力的作用，蜜蜂的复杂行为）。他们在小学教室里安装了先进的追踪设备。pi是建立在幼儿参与社会戏剧游戏的方式上的。通过角色扮演，孩子们探索和反思支配世界的复杂规则，在这个项目中，他们被要求在自然系统中扮演角色（例如，蜂巢中的蜜蜂），并确定使他们的角色扮演与自然系统的运作相匹配的规则。动作捕捉技术用于记录他们的互动，在角色扮演体验后，他们作为一个班级一起反思。研究的重点是这种游戏的两个方面所提供的反思和随后学习的质量——当儿童互动计划他们的角色扮演时（相当于建模），当他们表演系统或现象时（相当于模拟），然后有机会检查他们的互动。为了理解具体化游戏的启示和重要性，我们还比较了系统或现象（第一人称具体化模拟）和运行同一系统或现象的计算机模拟（第三人称虚拟模拟）两种情况下的反思和学习结果。目前，人们对如何在小学早期有效地教授科学知之甚少。为了适应这个年龄段，这些pi正在寻找如何最好地利用孩子们在这个年龄段自然参与的各种角色扮演。他们讨论角色扮演的大部分内容都是关于角色扮演的规则；pi的见解是，这可以被视为创建一个模型的等效物。这项研究正在开发一个模型，如何通过建模让K-3年级的孩子参与到科学学习中来，此外，重点关注游戏中导致学习的各种反思，以及如何在技术的帮助下影响这种反思和随后的学习。

In this Cyberlearning: Transforming Education DIP (Development and Implementation) project, the PIs are investigating how embodied play among elementary school students can be used to help them understand scientific phenomena (e.g., the working of forces, complex behaviors of bees). They are instrumenting elementary school classrooms with advanced tracking. The PIs are building upon the ways that young children engage in socio-dramatic play. Through role play, children explore and reflect upon the complex rules that govern the world, and in this project, they are asked to play roles in a natural system (e.g., bees in a beehive) and identify the rules that would make their role play match the workings of the natural system. Motion capture technology is used to record their interactions, and they reflect together as a class after role-playing experiences. Research focuses on the qualities of reflection and subsequent learning afforded by two aspects of such play -- when children interact to plan their role play (equivalent to modeling) and when they act out the system or phenomenon (equivalent to simulation) and then have a chance to examine their interactions. To understand the affordances and importance of embodied play, reflection and learning outcomes are also compared across conditions of acting out a system or phenomenon (1st person embodied simulation) and running a computer simulation of that same system or phenomenon (3rd person virtual simulation).There is currently little understanding of how to teach science productively in early elementary school. As suits this age group, these PIs are going after how to take best advantage of the kinds of role playing children naturally engage in at this age. Much of their role play discussion has to do with coming up with the rules of the role play; the PIs' insight is that this could be seen as the equivalent of creating a model. This research is developing a model of how to involve kids in grades K-3 in learning science through modeling and, in addition, focusing on the the kinds of reflection on that play that result in learning and how to affect such reflection and subsequent learning with the help of technology.