Enjoyed watching this video very much and loved hearing the students. What I find key about this is that the mobile devices do not substitute for getting the kids out into nature, but enhances what they can investigate once they are there. How many teachers are using this? Can it be scaled? Is it a problem providing every team of students with a smart phone? Great presentation. Thanks!

Yes, this is really cool, something I’d love to see in my son’s middle school where the “citizen science” projects seem kind of half-baked. I am curious about the level of resources required to implement in other schools. How are the hotspots created? How much does the equipment cost and how much professional development is required? Also wondering if you’ve been able to evaluate against a standard curriculum? The program itself seems extremely well designed so it’d be great to have evidence of impact!

The video shows our use of an augmented technology tool called FreshAiR (playfreshair.com), but this year we’re also trying out a new tool called ARIS (arisgames.org), which is free and open-source, and runs on iPads and iPhones. The software provides a simple authoring tool that lets us place and move hotspots.

We’re doing design-based research, and exploring different designs and uses for the technology in the field, so we haven’t done any comparison studies yet. I encourage you to visit our website for a list of recent publications, however, at http://ecolearn.gse.harvard.edu.

Excellent video

This project offers the best of the virtual science experiment world and the messy reality of doing real experiments. Students can get the basic ideas by working on simulations but then go out and learn that real experiments are often challenging to do and challenging to interpret. These experiences teach student not only the “scientific method” (whatever that is) but about the true nature of scientific research, an understanding all citizens should have.

I too like most of the other readers find this very fascinating and bring real world scientific methods and learning tools to these students is really student centered learning. The student’s area assimilates the information and learning while doing. This is great. My concern has already been voiced before and that is the access to the smart phones. When a wonderfully developed project like this one is only available through technology tools it is a problem and it becomes a matter of equity as those district that have money and the students already have access to better learning tools continue to receives more innovative ways of learning the gap for those without continue to grow. Has your team thought of how best they can adapt this learning so that it is not smart phone dependent? Please give us some insight as to how a teacher in some rural school where most schools are located in many states could use your system if the technology in and out of the classroom was not available.