Joshua Danish » First BeeSign Study

Paper: ‘Kindergarten and First-Grade Students’ Representational Practices While Creating Storyboards of Honeybees Collecting Nectar’

Joshua — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 16:05:13 +0000

Danish, J. A., & Phelps, D. (2010). Kindergarten and First-Grade Students’ Representational Practices While Creating Storyboards of Honeybees Collecting Nectar. In K. Gomez, L. Lyons & J. Radinsky (Eds.), Learning in the Disciplines: Proceedings of the 9th International Conference of the Learning Sciences (ICLS 2010) – Volume 1, Full Papers (pp. 420-427). Chicago IL: International Society of the Learning Sciences.

ABSTRACT: A productive approach to studying the role of representations in supporting students’ learning of science content is to examine their representational practices. The current study examines kindergarten and first-grade students’ representational practices in a similar context—the creation of storyboards—both before and after a curricular intervention in order to highlight those aspects of their practices that changed while engaging in a superficially similar task. Analysis of the students’ storyboards reveals considerable improvement after the intervention. Analysis of the students’ practices as they changed over time is also presented by examining the students’ interactions, with a focus on their discussions of the science content and the representations themselves.

Presentation: The Primary Interactive Pathway: An Analytic Tool For Examining and Comparing Students’ Representational Activities

Joshua — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 17:12:44 +0000

Danish, J. A. (2010). The Primary Interactive Pathway: An Analytic Tool For Examining and Comparing Students’ Representational Activities. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association.

Artifact: BeeSign

Joshua — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 00:50:53 +0000

BeeSign is a computer simulation designed to help young students observe the behavior of honeybees as they collect nectar and experiment with the result of changing either the behavior of the bees or the environment in which the hive is located. BeeSign was designed to be used on a smartboard with students and a teacher gathered around it to make predictions, observe the bees, and discuss the outcomes.

Try BeeSign 1.3 | Instructions

BeeSign 1.0 was originally created as part of the BeeSign project for use in the First BeeSign Study. The current version, 1.3, was created for use with Cross-Curriculum Representational Practices Project (CCRP).

For a list of all materials related to BeeSign, click here

Presentation: ‘BeeSign: a Design Experiment to Teach Kindergarten and First Grade Students About Honeybees From a Complex Systems Perspective’

Joshua — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 13:33:53 +0000

Danish, J. A. (2009). BeeSign: a Design Experiment to Teach Kindergarten and First Grade Students About Honeybees From a Complex Systems Perspective. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association.

Project: BeeSign and Participatory Modeling

Joshua — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 13:27:34 +0000

This project involved the implementation of a 10 week science curriculum unit for kindergarten and first grade which was designed to:

Examine students’ representational practices, and encourage students to be more reflective as they create representations in science.
Teach students about the process of honeybees collecting nectar from the perspective of complex systems, focussing on concepts such as emergence and interdependence in order to better understand how young students engage with and learn these complicated concepts.

To support these goals, the curriculum included a new form of activity called participatory modeling. Participatory modeling is an activity in which students engage in acting out their current understanding of the content in a way that leverages their ability to communicate well with their peers to help them focus on refining their model of the concepts. In addition, I developed a computer simulation called BeeSign to help students examine and experiment with the simulated behavior of a honeybee hive as it collects nectar.

Check out the related publications.