This website is not up to date -- for current information, go to my research group's website or my YouTube channel

EDUC-236X/CS-402 (Spring)
Beyond Bits and Atoms: technological tools for thinking and learning (link)

This course is a hands-on practicum in evaluating, designing and building technology-enabled curricula and learning environments. We will use many rich software toolkits and state-of-the-art prototyping technologies designed for novices to get their “hands dirty” designing educational software, educational toolkits, educational toys, and tangible user interfaces. A special focus of the course will be to design low-cost, appropriate technologies, particularly for urban school in the US and abroad.

After completing this course, you should be able to:

• Understand the constructionist design perspective and use it to author and assess technology-rich tools and learning environments, as well as how to combine this perspective with critical pedagogy.
• Design and implement educational software/hardware at the prototype level, and avoid common design errors.
• Design technology-enabled activities that take advantage of the computational medium, and exercise good judgment in such design within the target context, content domain and deployment situation.
• Design sophisticated objects using tools such as 3D printers, laser cutters, and routers (see lab course below).
• Use and implement in classroom projects around educational robotics, environmental sensing, computer modeling, and data-logging.

EDUC-211X/CS-402L (Spring and Winter)
Beyond Bits and Atoms Lab: rapid prototyping, sensing, robotics and fabrication applied to learning (link)

This course is a hands-on lab for prototyping and fabrication of tangible technologies, with a special focus in learning and education. We will learn how to use state-of-the-art fabrication machines (3D printers, 3D scanners, laser cutters, routers, sensors, polymer casting, robotics) to design educational toolkits, educational toys, science kits, and tangible user interfaces. A special focus of the course will be to design low-cost technologies, with high potential for deployment in low-income areas in the US and abroad.

After completing this course, you should be able to:

• Design and prototype objects and products using tools such as 3D printers, laser cutters, and routers.
• Design and prototype educational toolkits for science, math, robotics, environmental sensing, and data-logging, as well as interactive toys.
• Design simple hardware at the prototype level.
• Evaluate existing educational products as for their fabrication techniques, and design quality within their target audience, content domain and deployment plan.

See more projects at the Stanford Makers' Club website.

EDUC-390X/CS-424M (Winter)
Computational Modeling in Cognitive and Social Science (link)

Computational modeling and data-mining are dramatically changing the natural sciences, and more recently also the social and behavioral sciences. Traditional analytical techniques are insufficient to investigate complex dynamic social phenomena such as social networks, online gaming, diffusion of innovation, opinion dynamics, classroom behavior, and other complex adaptive systems. In this course, we will learn about how modeling, network theory, and basic data-mining can support research in cognitive, and social sciences, in particular about issues of learning, cognitive development, and educational policy..