LAB OF TOMORROW project:

A constractivist approach in science teaching

through the emerging technologies

Dr. Sofoklis A. Sotiriou

Ellinogermaniki Agogi

Stockholm, June 2001

The Lab of Tomorrow project

• The framework

• The consortium

• Project’s Description

• Human centered design

• Pedagogical and Technological innovations

• Examples

“To improve the quality and accessibility of learning at primary and secondary school level through embedded IST, in particular addressing knowledge and skills required by future citizens of the Information Society”

Main Objective of the School of Tomorrow Action Line

The Lab of Tomorrow Consortium

• ICCS / NTUA, Coordinator, Greece • STARLAB, Belgium• UNIV. OF BIRMINGHAM, United Kingdom• COREP, Italy• ANCO SA, Greece• UNIV. OF DORTMUND, Germany• ELLINOGERMANIKI AGOGI SA, Greece• 4 EUROPEAN HIGH SCHOOLS, Germany, Austria,

Italy

Project’s Objectives

– The development of a pedagogical framework that will allow successful application of the emerging technology in everyday learning

– enhancement of a constructivist approach in science teaching

– development of new educational tools and learning environments

– equal and parallel development of pedagogical and technological innovations

– development of a concrete evaluation scheme of educational and technological aspects

Project’s description

• “Lab of tomorrow” project proposes the introduction of an innovation into everyday teaching.

• Wearable computers and intelligent sensors will be used to guide students through the learning process in science.

• Fundamental physical laws in engineering and physics can be addressed through the daily analysis of the data that will be collected by some intelligent artefacts.

• Students will be able to graphically view all quantities under study and the data correlation through a scatter diagram on a computer screen.

• The project will attempt to overcome the limits of the classroom by having a network of schools gathering the same type of data and comparing their measurements.

• Research will thus become a collective process and the evaluation of the methods proposed will offer new innovating teaching techniques to be applied in the future educational environment.

The implementation scheme for the Lab of Tomorrow project.

PEDAGOGICAL PATHWAY

TECHNOLOGICAL PATHWAY

First meeting Second meeting Students’ projects(Technological and (Assessment of the Test Run)Pedagogical design) Teachers’ workshop Toys, wearables Closing conference

(Presentation of the prototypes) available (Presentation of the results)

Development ofthe prototypes

Test Run Validation andredesign

Final Run –phase A

Final Run –phase B

Human Centered Design in the Lab of Tomorrow project

Would you identify the basic steps of a human-centered development process?

Human-centered product development starts by studying

the users for whom the device is intended, in the field where

they normally work, study, and play.

Do what I call "rapid ethnography."

Then, using rapid prototyping procedures, design, mockup,

and test -in hours or days - to find out how people respond to

the product idea. Repeat this process until you settle upon an

acceptable result (this whole cycle is actually quite fast).

Then write the manual - make it short and simple - as simple

as possible. Use the manual and the prototypes as the design

specs for the engineers.

D. Norman

Human centered design in the Lab of Tomorrow

• Make rough, crude prototypes

• Show them to sample users in real situations

• Refine the early ideas and testing

• Start building when users are “happy”

• Development of axion prototypes

• Teachers’ meeting/Teachers’ workshop

• Three cycles of school centered work

• Development of wearables and toys

Contextual design (Incontext Enterprises)

Student-centred development

• The cycles of school-centred work are not only meant for evaluation purposes (technological and pedagogical).

• The aim is to help both teachers and students reach beyond “clichιs” to the areas in which they can make the most valuable contributions, and potentially increase their role on the world stage afterwards.

• To assure maximal usability of the new tools, optimal adaptation to the local environments and realistic evaluation of the pedagogical effects, the developed software use a heavily student-centred approach.

The six disciplines of User Experience(Norman, The Invisible Computer)

• Field studies• Behavioral designers• Model builders and rapid

prototypers• User-testers• Graphical and industrial

designers• Technical writers

• UniDo - EA• StarLab - UoB• NTUA - StarLab -UoB

• Schools• COREP - ANCO

• NTUA - UoB

Innovation• Pedagogical Innovation

• Teaching Science through every day activities

• Reinforcing inter-discipline approaches

• Promoting behavior and process oriented learning

• Technological Innovation• Bridging the gap between pedagogy and front-end

technology– Activity based design methodology– development of a series of lesson-plans

Technological innovation

• The consortium plans to develop a family of tiny, fully programmable computational devices, the axions, that can be embedded in everyday objects and cloths.

• The axions will give data in a format compatible with graphing and analysis software components, so that students can easily investigate trends and patterns in the data they collect with the wearable sensors

Equal and parallel development of pedagogical and technological

innovations

• In the presented approach technological innovations were designed to serve clear and specific educational demands.

• During the development of the proposed tools students and teachers came together with researchers, psychologists, and technological and educational experts to contribute to the re-engineering of the school of tomorrow and test and evaluate the new ideas, concepts and technologies in real school environments.

Technological development

• The project encompasses three significant technologies• intelligent clothing and wearable sensors

• advanced real time communication systems

• data manipulation, analysis and integration

• axions (sensor interface, main board-microcontroller, communication system)

• two categories of artefacts will be developed: toys and wearables

Axions

• accelerometer and Local GPS (basic laws of mechanics, Newton Laws)

• Recording of the Heart Electrical Signals (ECG) • a sensor based on piezoelectric phenomenon to measure

the distance covered • A Thermometer sensor (temperature, basic principals of

Thermodynamic Laws) • Sensors, microphones, to record the acoustic signals

(analysis of wave phenomena)

The block diagram of the axion which includes the sensor interface, the main board

and the communication module

Smart shoes (by Steve Mann, MIT Media Lab)

Compass and local GPS in a ball

Distribution of load

Kick life into the classroom

• The axions will provide data in a format compatible with graphing and analysis software components, so that students can easily investigate trends and patterns in the data they collect with the wearable sensors

• “Kick life into the classroom”: the graphical user-interface will plot the data on a graph, will create a mathematical model to fit the data and relate the graph with the motions of axions. As an example the case of a football game is presented.

Kick life into the classroom

Lab of Tomorrow

www.laboftomorrow.org

The project is being carried out in the framework of the IST programme of the European

Commission