My collaborators Dr. Tamara Clegg, Dr. Jason Yip, and I are excited to receive a $1.35 million grant from the NSF Cyberlearning program. Our project will examine how entire neighborhoods can learn science together and what technologies (e.g. social media and ubiquitous technology) can be designed to facilitate this learning process.
Category Archives: Current News
Reviewed “It’s Complicated” and “The App Generation” for JoCAM
Vicky Rideout invited me to write a book review for the Journal of Children and Media this past year, on two recent, high profile books that deal with issues of digital youth. I’m happy to report that the book review is out, and I believe is fully available for download for the public. Please check it out here:
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17482798.2014.923607#.U7L0PI1dWpQ
Ahn, J. (2014). Book Review – It’s Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens; The App Generation: How Today’s Youth Navigate Identity, Intimacy, and Imagination in a Digital World. Journal of Children and Media, 8(3), 313-316.
Maryland at ICLS 2014
I’m excited to attend my first ICLS next week in Boulder, CO. UMD will have a great presence this year, and 2 best paper nominations. Come join us!
Wed, 6/25/14
1:15-2:45pm
The Role of Identity Development Within Tensions in Ownership of Science Learning
*Nominated for Best Student Paper*
Jason Yip, Tamara Clegg, June Ahn, Elizabeth Bonsignore, Michael Gubbels, Emily Rhodes, Becky Lewittes
3:00-4:30pm
“I want to be a Game Designer or Scientist”: Connected Learning and Developing Identities with Urban, African-American Youth
*Nominated for Best Paper*
June Ahn, Mega Subramaniam, Elizabeth Bonsignore, Anthony Pellicone, Amanda Waugh, Jason Yip
The Nature of Student Thinking and Its Implications for the Use of Learning Progressions to Inform Classroom Instruction
Alicia Alonzo, Andrew Elby
Thursday, 6/26/14
1:00-2:30pm
SYMPOSIUM: Differing Notions Of Responsive Teaching Across Mathematics And Science: Does The Discipline Matter?
Andrew Elby (chair), Jennifer Richards, Janet Walkoe, Ayush Gupta, Rosemary Russ, Melissa Luna, Amy Robertson, Janet Coffey, Ann Edwards, Miriam Sherin, Beth van Es (discussant)
2:45-4:15pm
Capturing Personal and Social Science: Technology for Integrating the Building Blocks of Disposition
Tamara Clegg, Elizabeth Bonsignore, June Ahn, Jason Yip, Daniel Pauwe, Michael Gubbels, Becky Lewittes, Emily Rhodes
4:45-6:15pm
Characterizing a New Dimension of Change in Attending and Responding to the Substance of Student Thinking
Jennifer Richards, Andrew Elby, Ayush Gupta
What will Human-Computer Interaction look like in 2039?
Designing and Using Social Media for Childrens’ Science Learning
How can we design and use social media with children? It’s a complex issue that is less explored in the research literature (for a myriad of reasons related to policy, safety, convenience etc.). Add onto that the complexity of “learning” science; how could we use social media to promote science learning for children?
I’m really excited to share our paper, which will be presented at the CSCW 2014 Conference in February, called “Selfies for Science”. It’s a case study of our 2-year design process of a social media app for kids called ScienceKit, and how new types of collaborative learning configurations can happen when we implement it in an informal science program.
Open Education Research!!
Happy to report on several milestones concerning my research on open education.
Our research group has a web presence! Check us out at the CASCI page, we’re the OCEL Group (Open Communities for Education and Learning)
Had a paper on the Peer 2 Peer University appear in the Journal of Online Learning and Teaching, special issue on MOOCs: http://jolt.merlot.org/vol9no2/ahn_0613.htm
Was invited to give a talk at the Canadian Institute of Distance Education Research (CIDER) at Athabasca University. I talked about new opportunities for research and design of open education. The recorded talk and slides are available here: http://cider.athabascau.ca/CIDERSessions/ahn2013/sessiondetails
Check out a very cool workshop I am co-organizing at CSCW 2013, Designing Futures for Peer 2 Peer Learning: http://p2pl.media.mit.edu/
ASIS&T 2013
Several papers from my projects with colleagues and students were presented at ASIS&T 2013 in Montreal, Canada. Check them out below:
Ahn, J., Butler, B. S., Weng, C., & Webster, S.A. (2013). Learning to be a better Q’er in social Q&A sites: Social norms and information artifacts. In Proceedings of the Association of Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T) 76th Annual Meeting. [PDF]
Kim, J., & Ahn, J., (2013). The show must go on: The presentation of self during interpersonal conflict on facebook. In Proceedings of the Association of Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T) 76th Annual Meeting. [PDF]
Waugh, A., Taylor, N. G., Subramaniam, M., Ahn, J., Druin, A., Fleischmann, K. R. (2013). Young people’s engagement in content creation: An analysis of outliers. In Proceedings of the Association of Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T) 76th Annual Meeting. [PDF]
IDC 2013: Social Media and Learning Papers
My colleagues and I presented several papers at IDC 2013 related to our work with designing social media and alternate reality games for learning! Check out the papers below, as well as some cool videos that showcase this work:
Bonsignore, E., Hansen, D., Kraus, K., Visconti, A., Ahn, J., & Druin, A. (2013). Playing for real: Designing alternate reality games for teenagers in learning contexts. In Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Interaction Design and Children, New York, NY. [PDF]
Ahn, J., Yip, J., & Gubbels, M. (2013). SINQ: Designing social media to foster everyday scientific inquiry for children. In Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Interaction Design and Children, New York, NY. [PDF]
Ahn, J., Gubbels, M., Yip, J., Bonsignore, E., & Clegg, T. (2013). Using social media and learning analytics to understand how children engage in scientific inquiry. In Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Interaction Design and Children, New York, NY. [PDF]
What do we really have with MOOCs?
The revolution is here! The sky is falling! Popular and scholarly discussions of MOOCs vascillate between the extremes of euphoric technological utopianism or snarky vitriol that celebrates every MOOC failure (such as San Jose State University’s recent pilot with Udacity that resulted in the majority of students failing remedial math courses, see here). This state of discussion is not surprising if we think about MOOCs falling within the “hype cycle”.
Hype Cycle
If 2012 culminated in the peak of inflated expectations, 2013 is clearly the sharp trough of disillusionment. So what would lead us to the “slope of enlightenment” where we actually learn something about MOOCs?
We need to clearly articulate what we really have with MOOCs and also respect the large amount of research in education and learning that has largely been ignored in our discussion of MOOCs. How can we think about this in a systematic fashion?
Here are a few things to think about:
CSCL 2013 Paper Accepted
Happy to share that my co-authored paper with colleagues Tammy Clegg, Jason Yip, Elizabeth Bonsignore and others will be presented at Computer Supported Collaborative Learning 2013.
In the paper, we utilize a social media app I have been developing with HCI student Michael Gubbels called SINQ, in an after-school cooking program with children.
The paper highlights how the app helped the children break through some barriers to collaboration that they had.
Take a look here! [PDF]
Citation:
Clegg, T., Yip, J., Ahn, J., Bonsignore, E., Gubbels, M., Lewittes, B., & Rhodes, E. (2013). When face-to-face fails: Opportunities for social media to foster collaborative learning. Tenth International Conference on Computer Supported Collaborative Learning, Madison, WI.