Joshua Danish » Representation

Paper: Play and Augmented Reality in Learning Physics: The SPASES Project

Joshua — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 18:09:10 +0000

Enyedy, N., Danish, J. A., Delacruz, G., Kumar, M., & Gentile, S. (2011). Play and Augmented Reality in Learning Physics: The SPASES Project. In G. S. Hans Spada, Naomi Miyake, Nancy Law (Ed.), Connecting Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning to Policy and Practice: CSCL2011 Conference Proceedings. Volume I — Long Papers (pp. 216-223). Hong Kong, China: International Society of the Learning Sciences.

Award Recipient: This paper received the award for the Best Design Paper at CSCL 2011!

ABSTRACT: The Semiotic Pivots and Activity Spaces for Elementary Science (SPASES) Project was implemented as a proof of concept. Our goal was to demonstrate that with the right set of technological supports, young children can start their learning trajectory in science off on the right foot by engaging in rich scientific investigations into complex science topics. The SPASES curriculum was successfully implemented in two multi-age classrooms of 43 students aged 6-8 years at a progressive elementary school in Los Angeles, CA. Pre/Post-test results show that these 6-8 year old students were able to develop a conceptual understanding of force, net force, friction and two-dimensional motion after participating in the SPASES curriculum which leveraged their prior experiences and ability to engage in embodied play as a form of scientific modeling.

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

Joshua — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 15:30:46 +0000

Danish, J. A., & Saleh, A. (2011). The Primary Interactive Pathway: An Analytic Tool For Examining and Comparing Students’ Representational Activities. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Jean Piaget Society.

Presentation: ‘The Interactional Role of Kindergarten and First Grade Students’ Representational Practices’

Joshua — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 15:25:56 +0000

Danish, J. A., & Phelps, D. (2011). The Interactional Role of Kindergarten and First Grade Students’ Representational Practices. Paper presented at The Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association.

Paper: Representational Practices By The Numbers: How Kindergarten and First-Grade Students Create, Evaluate, and Modify Their Science Representations

Joshua — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 19:24:32 +0000

Danish, J. A., & Phelps, D. (2010). Representational Practices by The Numbers: How Kindergarten and First-Grade Students Create, Evaluate, and Modify Their Science Representations. International Journal of Science Education.

ABSTRACT: A productive approach to studying the role of representations in supporting students’ learning of science content is to examine their actions from a practice perspective. The current study examines kindergarten and first-grade students’ representational practices across a consistent context—the creation of storyboards—both before and after a curricular intervention in order to highlight those aspects of their practices that changed regardless of a superficially similar task. Analysis of the students’ storyboards reveals considerable improvement in the number of included features after the intervention. Analysis of the students’ practices as they changed over time is also presented by examining the students’ discourse, with a focus on their discussions of the science content and the representations themselves. We demonstrate an increase in accuracy and relevance of the features being discussed, as well as an increase in requesting and providing assessments of students’ representations, particularly between students and their peers.

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.

Visualizations

Joshua — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 13:26:49 +0000

More often than you realize as an academic, you will be representing data or other information. This might come in the form of a simple table, a straightforward graph, or a more elaborate visualization of data. Visualization of information is an incredibly difficult and yet outstandingly important task to focus on doing correctly. Not only does a good visualization convey information more clearly, but also in many cases more accurately.

One of the gurus of information visualization is Edward Tufte who has published a number of incredibly informative and stunningly beautiful books on the subject. I highly recommend that you check out his books. He also has an insightful, critical short work that examines the challenges of using Powerpoint effectively.

For a constantly updated stream of complicated and beautiful visualizations, I also like to follow http://infosthetics.com/.

Presentation: Play and Augmented Reality in Learning Physics: The SPASES project

Joshua — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 17:03:12 +0000

Enyedy, N., Danish, J. A., & Delacruz, G. (2010). Play and Augmented Reality in Learning Physics: The SPASES project. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association.

Tags, Hashtags, Keywords, and Categories

Joshua — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 17:54:29 +0000

If you click around my site you will notice that many of the articles, presentations, and projects are “tagged”. These tags are also listed on the right side of the site to help people navigate quickly to all of the entries that relate to a particular topic. Tags are common in blogs, wikis, and other websites. Hashtags play a similar role on Twitter (e.g., I use #p544 to identify tweets related to p544, a class that I teach). These tags all serve a similar role to the keywords that are often presented in an academic journal or conference submission website–they help to quickly and easily identify the broad categories that a work relates to.

Of course, each system has it’s quirks (some academic organizations, for example, have standardized sets of keywords to help keep things clear). However, tags play two incredibly valuable roles: 1) they help the author quickly identify their work, and 2) they help the reader or searcher, quickly find work that is related to an area of interest.

My recommendation, therefore, is that you attend to these! Furthermore, if you can come up with your own tags and categories to organize your materials, it will be incredibly helpful down the road. Having keywords in your reference manager, notebooks, and filing cabinets can be the difference between spending 2 minutes to find a few key articles, or spending hours looking for that one paper you are sure you read 5 years ago. In all of your writing, if you have an idea of what the big categories are that it will be linked to, it will help you shape your argument, experiment, ideas, etc. even if those aren’t the exact tags or keywords that you use in the end. The goal here is to use the concept of a tag, in any form, to organize and position your work effectively.

Project: Cross-Curriculum Representational Practices (CCRP)

Joshua — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 15:28:19 +0000

The CCRP project has two main goals:

To further examine students’ understanding of complex systems related concepts in the context of honeybees collecting nectar. In short, a follow-up to several aspects of the first BeeSign study with a modified curriculum to reflect lessons learned from the prior implementation.
To further our understanding of students’ representational practices by examining them in both science and language arts. This will provide some important contrast and further unpack the influence of context upon students’ representational activities.

This is a collaboration with Kylie Peppler and David Phelps.

This project also makes use of the BeeSign simulation software.