Digitally augmented physical spaces (e.g., smart classrooms) offer opportunities to engage students in novel and potentially transformative learning experiences. This paper presents an immersive rainforest simulation and collective inquiry activity where students collect observational data from the environment and explore their peers' data through large visualization displays and personal mobile devices. Two iterations of the design were tested, which resulted in higher quality student explanations constructed. Images were found to be an important source of evidence for the explanations, more so than text-only evidence. We also found that patterns of collective ideas influenced student performance, and that visualizations, as ambient or plenary displays, supported both teacher and students in reviewing patterns of collected data.

Children often report that school science is boring and abstract. For this reason, we have developed Life-relevant Learning (LRL) environments to help learners understand the relevance that scientific thinking, processes, and experimentation can have in their everyday lives. In this paper, we detail findings that aim to increase our understanding of the ways in which technology can support learners' scientific practice and their personal meaning in LRL through the integration of two mobile apps into an LRL environment. Our analysis of the artifacts created in these systems show that technology must strike a balance between structured scaffolds and flexible personal design to support learners' scientifically meaningful experiences. Our data suggests that integration of media forms and mobile technology can provide creative ways for learners to express their scientific thinking, make artifacts of their personally meaningful experiences, and individualize artifacts in scientifically meaningful ways.

Scientific inquiry can be more authentic and meaningful to students when using personal and peer-collected data. The challenges of organizing and evaluating a potentially large amount of data can be overcome through the use of annotations (title, tags, and audio notes). We created Zydeco, a multi-component system that students use to collect annotated multimedia data from a museum (using a smartphone app), and then create a scientific explanation with their personal and peers' data (using a tablet app). We ran a classroom study with 54 students (ages 11-13) investigating how students searched for, evaluated, and used annotated data to construct a scientific explanation. We found that tags supported data interpretation, while title searching and panning through the unfiltered data set supported finding and using data.

Nomadic scientific inquiry -- technology-supported authentic inquiry done on-the-go, across settings -- has the potential to engage students in learning new concepts and practicing essential science skills. We developed the Zydeco system to support nomadic inquiry in part through enabling the collection and annotation of multimodal data (photographs and audio notes). The system was designed to bridge school and museum contexts through project-based science inquiry. In this study, we explore how Zydeco influences student behavior and sensemaking in the museum. We compared the behaviors of middle-school students who used either Zydeco or paper worksheets to perform inquiry in a museum, and found that, while both the worksheets and the system engendered heads-down behavior, the Zydeco system increased active sociocultural engagement.

Nomadic inquiry may benefit from tagging when used for educational purposes to support reflection and annotation during data collection. To that end we created Zydeco, a mobile system to scaffold learners through the science inquiry process in and out of the classroom, and tested it in a museum with 42 middle school students. Students report that tags encouraged reflection and annotation during data collection, suggesting that tagging can be used to support nomadic inquiry. From this work we present some emerging design recommendations for constructing similar systems.

Museums and other out-of-school settings, are ideal contexts for children to engage in authentic scientific inquiry. However, students need support to successfully do inquiry outside of the classroom, and to make connections between what they are learning in and outside of school. Zydeco is a new system that aims to support students in seamlessly conducting inquiry across contexts. Zydeco includes an online web component that allows students to define goals, questions, and categorical information for their science investigations. This information is uploaded to a handheld device, which allows students to photograph, tag, and annotate information in a museum. Students can then access their museum work in the classroom to complete their investigations. Here we describe the Zydeco system, highlighting strategies for addressing challenges of mediating inquiry across class and museum contexts.

The StoryTime project explores the benefits of and issues surrounding the use of mobile finger-touch devices to support struggling writers. StoryTime is a mobile finger-touch tool designed from a learner-centered design perspective to be a supportive writing tool for children 7--9 years old. StoryTime allows children to write stories by providing simpler writing mechanics, increased user engagement, and a contextualized writing experience. The combination of these attributes allows struggling writers to focus more on the sentence construction task. Here we describe the iterative design and testing of three versions of StoryTime on 13 children to date.