Overview

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Overview

• Major advances in the learning sciences over past
  several decades
• Powerful interactive learning environments are
  building on these developments
• Defining and tackling the challenges of scaleup
  and sustainability
• How advances in computing and communications are
  creating exciting opportunities to address needs
• An emerging nexus of technology advances,
  learning sciences and educational policy

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Revolutionary advances in sciences of learning

• National Academy of Sciences How People Learn
  (1999)
• The nature of expertise
• Development of concepts and reasoning abilities
• New pedagogies for deep learning of complex
  subjects
• Roles of teacher learning
• New assessment approaches for higher standards
• Powerful roles for effective use of technologies

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Aspects of the sciences of learning

• The knowledge-intensive nature of expertise
• Expertise is not simply general abilities nor use
  of general strategies
• Experts extensive knowledge affects what they
  notice and how they organize, represent, and
  interpret information in their environments
• Expert knowledge organized in large coherent
  frameworks
• Experts notice features and meaningful
  information patterns unnoticed by novices
• Expert knowledge reflects contexts of
  application--it is not reducible to isolated
  facts
• Expert knowledge does not guarantee pedagogical
  knowledge

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The importance of representational competencies
for expertise

• Expertise often involves the skillful creation,
  use, and interpretation of symbolic expressions
  (written language, mathematical equations,
  graphs, technical diagrams, proofs, computer
  programs)
• Experts have greater meta-representational
  proficiencies than novicesknowing which
  representational forms are most suitable for
  asking and answering specific kinds of questions
• Experts have facile understanding of the mappings
  between different representational forms (e.g.,
  algebraic functions to graphs or numerical
  tables)
• Experts are able to assemble arguments, designs,
  theories, and other complex artefacts that are
  subject to challenge and testing in a community
  of peers

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The development of concepts and reasoning
abilities

• Young children rapidly come to make sense of
  number, language, and causality
• In their efforts to make sense of the world,
  children form robust conceptions that may
  conflict with the formal knowledge that is later
  taught (e.g., intuitive physics)
• The development of metacognition is a crucial
  aspect of acquiring expertise and becomes a
  strategic competency for learning
• Knowledge about ones knowledge and its limits
• Control knowledge about thinking and learning
  planning, monitoring, and revising ones efforts

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Contextual and cultural influences on learning

• Participation in social practices is a crucial
  form of learning outside school and in school
• The broad diversity of social practices in
  different cultural contexts creates special
  challenges for engaging students prior knowledge
  in school
• Learning is promoted by social norms that value a
  search for understanding
• Learning is assisted by the family and social
  environment in which activities provide
  opportunity for learning through participation

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From learning sciences theory to learning
environment design

• Not a simple translation
• Physics constrains but does not dictate bridge
  design (Herbert Simon)
• The field of the learning sciences is raising
  important questions and inquiries
• Rethinking what is taught
• Rethinking how it is taught for understanding
• Reframing how learning is appropriately assessed
• Powerful examples of Interactive Learning
  Environments (ILEs) that build on our
  understandings from the sciences of learning
• SimCalcs MathWorlds
• The Knowledge Integration Environment
• WorldWatcher Scientific visualizations for
  global investigations
• Cognitive tutoring systems

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SimCalc Democratizing access to the Mathematics
of Change

• Enable all students to develop full
  understanding and practical skills with the
  Mathematics of Change and Variation, including
  fundamental concepts of calculus
• As early as Grades 5-8against a backdrop of
  10 taking High School Calculus, 1.5 taking AP
  Calculus
• Collaborators
• Jim Kaput (U. Mass, Dartmouth)
• Jeremy Roschelle (SRI International)
• Ricardo Nemirovsky (TERC)
• Rutgers-Newark Syracuse San Diego USI
• How can technologies and engaging learning
  activities change the experiential nature of the
  Mathematics of Change and Variation by tapping
  more deeply into students cognitive, linguistic,
  and kinesthetic resources?

Target Age Who Learning sciences Questi
ons
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SimCalc Co-evolution of technology and MCV
curriculum
Source Kaput, NCTM 2000
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The New Big 3 for Learning the Mathematics of
Change and Variation
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SimCalc Co-evolution of MCV curriculum and
technology

• Curriculum With technology use in activities of
  predicting, comparing, designing, build on
  student experiences with
• physical change (motions, seasons, aging, growth,
  flows)
• symbolic change (smaller numbers, steeper curves)
  
• Advanced topics
• Connections between variable rates and
  acculumation
• Velocity, acceleration, limits
• Contextualizes other mathematical topics such as
• Slope, rate,ratio, proportion
• Areas of geometric figures

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Example of a SimCalc activity
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SimCalc outcomes

• Technology linkages between experiential
  phenomena and mathematical representations become
  conceptually linked in students mathematical
  competencies.
• After a three-month supplementary course in MCV
  using MathWorlds, students from the most troubled
  high school in Newark NJ achieved near-ceiling
  effects on assessment items that challenge
  university calculus students
• Testing low-SES school mainstream Grade 6-10
  students indicated higher levels of performance
  after MCV coursework than high-SES Gr 11-12
  students taught traditional calculus. They.
• Relate slope of position graph to speed of a
  motion and to the corresponding velocity graph
• Infer total distance covered, given by velocity
  graph, demonstrating accumulation of area under a
  curve

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Now and Future SimCalc

• MathWorlds implementation in Java (Roschelle, SRI
  International)
• Incorporation of Java MathWorlds in ESCOT project
  testbed of interoperable middle school math
  components
• TERCs LBM (Line Becomes Motion)
• To incorporate kinesthetic experience, students
  use mathematical functions created on a computer
  to control physical devices (like motorized
  toycars)
• MathWorlds commercially available in Flash ROM on
  TI-83Plus graphing calculators (Fall 99) and PCs
  (Key Curriculum Press, Fall 2000)
• Massive teacher development with NJ and Mass SSIs
  and San Diego USI T-Cubed workshops run by TI

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KIE Knowledge Integration Environment

• To promote coherent knowledge integration in
  science learning that is reflectively and
  critically used (versus unconnected facts and
  beliefs)
• Middle to high school sciences
• Marcia Linn, Jim Slotta, et al (UC Berkeley) and
  diverse scientist partners and organizations
• Expertise involves connected ideas and models
  used for reasoning.
• Do learners develop more integrated understanding
  and models when they engage in meaningful
  collaborative projects using technologies that
  support key cognitive and social aspects of
  scientific inquiry and make thinking visible?

Target Age Who Learning sciences issues
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KIE Technology

• KIE is a client-side front-end to the World-Wide
  Web where student project activities are
  supported by
• SenseMaker software that scaffolds thinking
  and the organization of critically-considered
  evidence in scientific argument
• KIE Project units
• An associated KIE Evidence Database
• Mildred the Cow Guide a provider of reflect
  process prompts (what to do next and how)
• SpeakEasy net forum for project participants to
  share issues
• Written reflections and class discussions

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KIE Curriculum

• Student teams work with and/or create scientific
  evidence in three kinds of supplementary units (2
  days to 2 weeks long)
• Theory comparison projects (e.g., dinosaur
  extinction, life on Mars)
• Design projects (e.g., an energy-efficient home
  in the desert using scientific principles)
• Critique project (e.g., science tabloid claims on
  energy conversion)
• Scientist partners (e,g., NASA Ames)
• Post web evidence for pre-college science
  teachers
• Suggest debates, critiques, or design projects
  for learners
• Mentor students using personal web pages

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KIE Outcomes

• Students can be effectively encouraged to
  integrate their knowledge through simple prompts
  for reflection on their ideas (Mildred the Cow)
• Students can develop well-formulated scientific
  arguments
• Net-based discussions enable more students to
  voice their ideas about the science, especially
  girls
• Major improvements in integrated understanding of
  project topics such as light, heat, temperature,
  and sound

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KIE Now and Future

• Many of KIEs nearly 20 projects have been
  classroom-tested
• KIE has become WISE (Web-Based Integrated Science
  Environment)
• and has spawned Project SCOPE
• Science Controversies On-Line Partnerships in
  Education
• New NSF-funded effort (UC Berkeley, SCIENCE
  magazine, U. Washington)
• Will develop controversy communities of
  scientists and science learners, focusing on
  controversies that concern leading research
  scientists and also connect to citizen interests,
  e.g.,
• World-wide control of malaria
• Evidence for life on mars
• Deformed frogs (environmental chemical or
  parasite?)

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WorldWatcher Scientific visualizations for
global inquiry

• Students at all grade levels and in every domain
  of science should have the opportunity to use
  scientific inquiry and develop the ability to
  think and act in ways associated with inquiry
• (National Science Education Standards, National
  Research Council, 1996, p. 105)
• Using visual reasoning for pattern perception in
  inquiries involving complex data sets
• CoVis and later WorldWatcher global warming
  curriculum as examples
• Who Daniel Edelson (Northwestern U), Roy Pea,
  Douglas Gordin (now at SRI International)
• The multi-agency GLOBE Project coordinated by NSF
  provides another example

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A visualization of temperature data for the
Northern Hemisphere displayed by Transform, a
powerful, general-purpose visualization
environment widely used by scientific researchers
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A visualization window from the WorldWatcher
software displaying surface temperature for
January 1987.
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The interface to the library of energy balance
data in the WorldWatcher global warming curriculum
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A tenth grade students hand-drawn visualization
of global temperature for July (Edelson, Gordin,
Pea, J. Learning Sciences, 1999.
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Questions about visualization

• For what domains are visualizations particularly
  crucial for promoting understanding?
• How does the use of these visualizations
  influence mental imagery and reasoning in problem
  solving both while using and when without access
  to the computer-generated visualizations?
• How do how these representations ease the tasks
  of understanding and using knowledge about the
  conceptual systems they depict?
• We need an empirical science of representational
  design for understanding complexity, not only
  capturing and displaying it.

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Intelligent tutoring environments

• Better and more efficient learning of
  well-structured domains algebra I, geometry,
  algebra II, college algebra
• Middle school to remedial college
• Pittsburgh Advanced Cognitive Tutor Center
  (Koedinger, Anderson, Corbett) new NSF research
  center (CIRCLE)
• Cognitive Tutors conjoin a research base from
  cognitive psychology (ACT-R) and artificial
  intelligence with curriculum content in
  mathematics from math educators
• Key tenets of theory
• Learning by doing, not listening or watching
• Production rules represent performance knowledge
• Units are modular, so isolate skills, concepts,
  strategies
• Units are context-specific, so address when as
  well as how
• In search of 2-sigma effect where human tutors
  excel over classroom instruction by two standard
  deviations (Bloom, 1984)

Target Age Who Learning sciences questions
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What cognitive tutors do

• Provide a cognitive model that incorporates
  different strategies and typical student
  misconceptions
• Provide model tracing that follows a student
  through their individual approach to a problem
  (context-sensitivity)
• Uses knowledge tracing to assess student
  knowledge growth through graded levels of
  competence, and adaptively select activities for
  learning (just-in-time assistance in reasoning)
• PUMP algebra tutor provides 1 standard deviation
  improvement
• Results after 3 years of replicated studies of
  urban school use in Pittsburgh and Milwaukee
  indicate increases of 15-25 on standardized
  tests (SAT subtest, Iowa) and 50-100 better on
  problem solving and representation use measures.
• Students highly motivated, reduce embarrassment,
  and succeed
• Teachers are able to shift their attention and
  support to struggling students

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The view from research to practice

• Too much like Saul Steinbergs famous New Yorker
  poster of Manhattan...Everyone knows about the
  advances in the learning sciences
• Really?
• These advances are too rarely reflected in
  educational practices.

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Linear flow model
The usual means of knowledge transfer through
dissemination has rarely worked for bringing
research to bear broadly on practice
Source 1999 NAS report on Bridging Learning
Research and Educational Practices
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Reciprocity-of-influence model
Source 1999 NAS report on Bridging Learning
Research and Educational Practices
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Defining the challenges of scaleup and
sustainability

• Most studies with designs of interactive learning
  environments informed by the sciences of learning
  are
• Small-scale efforts
• Not sustained
• Common problem of lethal mutation of
  innovations
• Cultural and linguistic diversity of school
  environments
• Importance of attention to standards,
  accountability, assessment at a local level
• Teacher professional development
• Marketplace issues from prototypes to
  sustainable products and services with needed
  support

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Scaling of innovations

• The successes of learning technology innovations
  are typically accompanied by researcher hothouse
  effects
• Common problem of lethal mutation of
  innovations (Ann Brown)
• Why? Teachers are designers!
• Teachers continue to design curricula in their
  classroom uses and local adaptations (four phases
  of curricula)
• Need to localize for success rarely supported by
  teachers understanding of the design rationale
  for why the innovation has its features and
  practices
• Cultural and linguistic diversity of school
  environments

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Standards, accountability, assessment

• Curriculum practices are strongly driven by
  systems of accountability and assessment
• Standards provide an important common language
  for expected outcomes
• Educators need usable and compelling forms of
  assessment in tandem with innovative curricula
  and technologies for learning
• Performance and portfolio assessments are making
  headway as more meaningful guides to progress

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Teacher professional development

• Teacher Professional Development (TPD) is a
  critical component of all education reform
  efforts
• Formal TPD approaches (e.g., summer institutes,
  collaboratives) can offer motivating,
  collaborative learning experiences but find it
  hard to
• scale to large numbers
• sustain collaboration back at teachers home
  sites
• provide cost- and time-effective support through
  the change process
• tailor content to local school, district
  initiatives
• build infrastructure for sustainable TPD (and
  reform) systems
• Difficulties confirmed in evaluation of NSFs SSI
  TPD work

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Evaluation of NSFs SSI TPD efforts

• Most states provided limited TPD time and the
  SSIs typically supplemented formal TPD activities
  with less than 1 week a year
• No SSI had resources to reach all teachers
  needing TPDonly a minority
• Follow-up procedures require many opportunities
  for assistance, feedback, and reflection in
  coaching, meeting with others involved in the
  process or other connections with colleagues
• Intros of new practices require time for
  discussion, questioning, risk-free practice,
  sharing and reflection, revision
• Interaction with colleagues very important, since
  teachers often work in isolation and lack
  opportunities to observe others, share their
  expertise and experience, or practice new
  techniques.
• Good TPD helps build learning communities within,
  among, and beyond schools
• (Source Corcoran, Shields and Zucker, SRI
  International, March 1998)

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The research-commerce culture divide

• Marketplace issues from prototypes to products
  and services with necessary support
• Two cultures different audiences, purposes,
  pressures
• The divide may narrow as.
• Research greets complexities of practice
• Grant agencies seek scale and sustainability
• Companies seek innovations and to leverage
  external research
• New models for public-private partnerships will
  need to evolve (beyond technology transfer)

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Tackling the challenges of scaleup and
sustainability

• A design research orientation
• With partnership models that can work in bringing
  together necessary expertise and realism to
  scaleable learning improvements
• With networked improvement communities that seek
  to augment collective intelligence for some
  purpose and develop sustainable solutions

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A Design Research Focus

• Design research
• Challenges the traditional basic-applied science
  distinction
• Embraces situational complexity and works to
  manage it through to solutions, and reflect them
  as cases
• Learning engineering Iterative design over
  multiple generations of a research-guided
  intervention to improve learning

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The need for partnership models

• Tackling design research toward scaleable models

• Brief examples
• SCOPE Science Controversies On-Line
  Partnerships in Education (UC Berkeley and
  SCIENCE magazine)
• LeTUS design circles of middle school science
  teachers, curriculum and assessment experts,
  learning researchers, technology developers
  (Northwestern and Chicago Schools U. Michigan
  and Detroit Schools)

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Networked improvement communities

• Communities that seek to augment collective
  intelligence for some purpose using the net
• ESCOT integration teams
• TAPPED IN and ongoing teacher professional
  development
• CILT and industry alliance program
• Infrastructure is coming together for schools,
  homes

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• ESCOT is a digital library of linkable component
  tools and a community of teachers, researchers
  developers creating, improving, and testing these
  technologies in real classrooms with real
  curricula
• Principal Investigators Jeremy Roschelle, Roy
  Pea, Chris Digiano, Jim Kaput

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Towards a digital library of re-usable components
for middle-school mathematics

• Best of class graphs, tables, calculators,
  dynamic geometry, simulations, 100 or so core
  elements
• Enable plug and play, mix and match
• Linked multiple representations and other core
  educational features

• Key ESCOT Partners
• SRI International
• Key Curriculum Press (Geometers Sketchpad)
• The Show Me Center, University of Missouri
• Swarthmore (MathForum),
• University of Colorado, Boulder (AgentSheets)
• University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth (SimCalc)

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ESCOT Integration Teams put components together

• Teacher Pedagogical Design
• Developer Component Design
• Web facilitator Web Design ( teamwork)

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Its the right time

• Java a common platform
• XML integration glue
• Web coordinate distributed work
• Standards (e.g IMS)
• Labelling for search (metadata)
• Plug play, mix match
• Linked representations

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• Web-based teacher professional development (TPD)
  environment designed with easy-to-understand
  virtual conference center metaphor (social
  computing research)
• Multi-user, chat, and shared Web browsing
• Supports use of assessment and curriculum
  development tools
• Significant growth and demand
• Over 3,400 registered users, 14 partnership
  organizations (as unmarketed RD)
• Technical plans for enabling large-scale
  implementations
• Strong brand identity and evangelists
• NY Times How to get the most from computers in
  the classroom
• Highlighted in US Dept of Educations What
  works
• Working with LA Unified and state of Kentucky in
  major reform plans
• Funding by National Science Foundation private
  foundations, tenants, and corporate sponsorship
  (Sun Microsystems)

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Introducing CILT

• Roy Pea (SRI), Marcia Linn (UC Berkeley), John
  Bransford (Vanderbilt), Barbara Means (SRI), Bob
  Tinker (Concord Consortium)

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Center for Innovative Learning Technologies

• A distributed center for advancing LT RD
• MISSION
• To serve as a national resource for stimulating
  research on innovative, technology-enabled
  solutions to critical problems in K-14 learning
  in science, mathematics, engineering and
  technology.
• Open structure with annual workshops for
  harvesting knowledge and leveraging diverse
  efforts
• Working on theme teams of high-priority led by
  2-3 senior researchers and a post-doctoral
  scholar
• Visualization and Modeling
• Ubiquitous Computing
• Community Tools
• Assessments for Learning

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CILTs Industry Alliance Program

• How we are working on the research-commerce
  divide through industry alliances
• Intels senior partnership with CILT community
• Texas Instruments and hand-held learning
  environments
• Palm Computer sponsorship of CILT educational
  software design competition

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Some closing observations...
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Underlying dynamics of forces in the
technological landscape

• Moores Law
• Microprocessing capability doubles every year or
  at least every 18 months
• Metcalfes Law
• The value of a network is the square of the
  number of nodes connected to that network

Supply chain efficiencies and virtual companies
are revamping global business and will affect
every life sector (PITAC 98 Report) Fast PCs
and information appliances, fat pipes, digital
content
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Presidents Information Technology Advisory
Committee Report to the President (August 98)

• Vision of Transforming the Way We Learn
• Any individual can participate in on-line
  education programs regardless of geographic
  location, age, physical limitation, or personal
  schedule. Everyone can access repositories of
  educational materials, easily recalling past
  lessons, updating skills, or selecting from among
  different teaching methods in order to discover
  the most effective style for that individual.
  Educational programs can be customized to each
  individuals needs, so that our information
  revolution reaches everyone and no one gets left
  behind.

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Its not enough of a Grand Challenge

• Enabling this vision requires re-inventing
  learning substantively, not only the HOW and WHEN
  of learning
• We will do better at re-inventing learning if we
  heed the PITAC visions of transforming the ways
  we
• Communicate
• Deal with information (I/O)
• Work
• Design and build things
• Conduct research
• Deal with the environment
• Do commerce
• Each of these areas in society is spawning new
  literacies and required skills for an informed
  and proficient citizen.
• Keeping education apace of the needed learning
  curve is the Grand Challenge

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Looking forward, computational media will...

• Because of their use in research and society,
  continue to create new content, in mathematics
  and science such as complexity theory, neural
  nets, emergence
• Allow broad accessibility of powerful ideas, and
  alter the age level and sequencing of curriculum
  we will need to invent to meet the demands of a
  new knowledge age
• Thus require partnership model research and
  development at the edges of content-coming-to-be
  collaborative innovations and empirical
  investigations of co-evolving subject matter,
  technology and appropriate curriculum
• Such research by definition will be at the
  interstices of the disciplinary areas by which
  the National Science Foundation is organized

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Lets work together to rise to this Grand
Challenge for learning and its affiliated
sciences.
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THANKS FOR YOUR TIMEPlease visit us
atCILT.org and SRI.com/Policy/CTL!!
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Large research challenges

• Infomating the physical environment for learning
  with ubiquitous computing and transmitting
  (Spohrers WorldBoard concept extending web URLs
  to geo-located things-in-the-world)
• Developing Bayesian and other machine learning
  approaches to user-profiling of sufficient power
  that they may infer a learners interests and
  abilities from their net-based interactons, and
  offer up relevant resources to learn
• Pervasive knowledge integration environments with
  rich and age-appropriate metadata cataloging of
  web resources for inquiries to develop
  high-standards learning
• Lifelong digital portfolios of learning

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Facing the challenge
We predict that educational portals providing
a gateway to the Internet, the worlds greatest
library, will emerge in K-12, postsecondary and
corporate training markets. The Book of
Knowledge Investing in the growing education and
training industry. M. Moe, K. Bailey, R. Lau.
Merrill-Lynch In-Depth Report, April 9, 1999.
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Research in context of learning portals is needed

• To grow connected learning communities based
  on...
• Quality (from research and experience)
• Cooperation (we share information to help one
  another learn)
• Collaboration (learning together)
• Communication
• To accelerate distributed learning.
• Effective use of better standards-based learning
  resources and assessments
• Teacher professional development
• Effective student use of the Internet for
  learning
• School-home connections
• To bring customers-providers together more
  effectively

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Emerging Learning Solutions

• Concept Service provision via web-based network
  from any device

K-12 Portals as leverage point for investment

• As in
• Sun Microsystems WebTone
• Microsofts Digital Nervous System