Stanford University

Generation ECO

Generation Eco combines environmental awareness, global collaboration, and innovation. Students will study the deep math and science behind everyday actions, design working solutions for climate change, and share their ideas globally. Using sophisticated computer-based tools, they will complete inquiry-based projects and develop prototypes with colleagues throughout the global GECO community.

Learning Analytics

Politicians, educators, business leaders, and researchers are unanimous to state that we need to redesign schools to teach the so-called 21st century skills: creativity, innovation, critical thinking, problem solving, communication, collaboration, among others. None of those skills are easily measured using current assessment techniques, such as multiple choice tests or even portfolios – and, as Lord Kelvin famously said, “if you can't measure it, you can't improve it.” As a result, our schools are paralyzed by the push to teach new skills, and the lack of reliable ways to assess those skills. One of the difficulties is that current assessment instruments are based on end products (an exam, a project, a portfolio), and not on processes (the actual cognitive and intellectual development while performing a learning activity), due to the intrinsic difficulties in capturing detailed process data for large numbers of students. However, new sensing and data mining technologies could make it possible to capture and analyze massive amounts of process data of classroom activities. This project investigates the use of biosensing, signal- and image-processing, and machine learning to explore multidimensional process-based student assessments.

The $20 Science & Robotics Lab: a Low Cost, Open Source Platform For Hands-on Scientific Exploration

Scientific literacy requires exposure to hands-on scientific tools, but those tools are prohibitively expensive for most schools, particularly in high-need areas. The $20 Science & Robotics Lab project purports to give children and schools a low cost, powerful toolkit for hands-on science and robotics. Being open-source and inexpensive will allow students to even take home their own science lab and continue their school work throughout the day. Having a "take home" science toolkit will allow students to explore their own world with scientific eyes, and learn about physics, chemistry, environmental science, mathematics, electronics, programming, and more -- in real-life contexts. Universities in the US and Thailand will collaborate to develop a hardware platform, low-cost scientific sensors, learning activities, and a website for collaborative scientific projects. This project will use the GoGo Board framework, a hardware platform for robotics designed from the ground-up to be low-cost and user-friendly for children.

Learning Fabrication Lab and Stanford Makers' Club

more information here

Gogo Board (with Arnan Sipitakiat)
Linux and the Open Source movement proved that there are other ways to provide technology to people. The commercial, corporate, centralized model is not the only one. Departing from our experience working in developing countries such as Thailand and Brazil, we envisioned a new way of putting technology in the hands of students at a low cost. The Gogo Board framework is a concrete step towards providing sustainable, low cost computational technologies to low-income areas. The Board itself, designed by Arnan Sipitakiat at MIT, costs approximately 5 times less than most commercial products, and can be assembled locally with components found in local stores in Brazil, USA or Thailand. In more than 50 Brazilian schools, we are providing  low-cost, open-source digital equipment to children, schools and non-formal learning environments. Co-developing technologies with local partners is one viable alternative for introducing digital technologies without creating even more dependency.

Official website: http://www.gogoboard.org
Documents in Portuguese:
Comandos da Placa GoGo para o Imagine Logo
Como fazer sensores

Bifocal Modeling

This project Investigates the connections between computer simulations and the physical world. We are building a set of systems which connect multi-agent-based models to physical manipulatives in a variety of topics, such as chemical equilibrium, gas laws, and heat transfer. Multi-agent-based simulation is a useful tool to understand complex natural phenomena. We want to extend it by connecting agent-based models to the physical world, providing students with tools to build physical counterparts for computer simulations. We believe this symbiotic relationship between on- and off-screen modeling and simulation to be greatly beneficial in terms of breadth of projects, their potential for deep investigation as well as student motivation.

Old website: http://ccl.northwestern.edu/netlogolab

MaterialSim

This project provides students and researchers with powerful agent-based simulation tools for a variety of phenomena in Materials Science, such as grain growth and solidification. Most commercial simulation packages in Engineering “black-box” their mathematical and physical models. MaterialSim is an attempt to address this issue, with "glass-box" models for crystallization, solidification, metallic grain growth and annealing. In addition, our research has suggested that the agent-based perspective may foster deeper understanding of the relevant scientific phenomena. A core feature of this design is that students, after understanding the very basic principles of the models, were able to apply that small number of rules to capture fundamental causality structures underlying behaviors in a range of apparently disparate phenomena within a domain.

Old website: http://ccl.northwestern.edu/materialsim

NetLogo (collaborator)

Agent-Based Modeling software for children and research, developed by the Center for Connected Learning and Computer-Based Modeling (Uri Wilensky, director) at Northwestern Univesity
Website (free download): http://ccl.northwestern.edu/netlogo

Old projects

Northwestern University Projects (2003-2008)

NetLogo
Agent-Based Modeling software for children and research, developed by the Center for Connected Learning and Computer-Based Modeling (Uri Wilensky, director) at Northwestern Univesity
Website (free download): http://ccl.northwestern.edu/netlogo

Bifocal Modeling (formerly Hybrid Modeling/NetLogoLab)
Putting together agent-based modeling, tangible interfaces, and real-world scientidic experiments.
More about: http://ccl.northwestern.edu/netlogolab
Papers: see publications page

MaterialSim
A set of agent-based microworlds to explore Materials Science.
Website: http://ccl.northwestern.edu/materialsim
Papers: see publications page

Robotics and simulators for medical education
Independent study with Professor Carla Pugh, from Northwestern's Feinberg School of Medicine. We are investigating how expert and novice doctors perform medical examinations, using mannequins equipped with various sensors. Doctors are also interviewed and answer a questionnaire about their previous experience. From this data, we are trying to identify patterns in both profiles (expert and novice), and creating new technological tools and learning environments for medical students to learn how to perform medical exams.

Teacher's mental models of the learners' minds
How do teachers think that the mind of their students work? How do they imagine that learning happens inside the minds of their pupils?

Documents:
Book chapter in Evaluation in Online Learning. Ed. Loyola, Brazil (see publications page)

MIT Media Lab Projects (2000-2003)

The city that we want (A cidade que a gente quer)

This project, conducted together with the Secretary of Education of São Paulo, Agência Estado and the Bradesco Foundation, is introducing new ideas and technologies in the Brazilian public and non-profit education system, involving more than 50 schools. The main idea is to have children identify the problems in their community, design solutions using multiple expressive technologies and computational technology and implement the changes in partnership with the local government or community groups.

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