Critical Data Stories: Co-Designing Remixing Tools with Teachers to Support Critical Data Literacy with Middle School Youth

2023 - 2026

Youth are avid creators and consumers of data-related claims through their participation on social media sites, in which they view, produce, and share content. They remix content, building off one another?s videos, gifs, and memes to represent and discuss topics they care about. However, participation on these same platforms can result in echo chambers, misinformation, and proliferation of perspectives that are detached from real-world experience.

Read More

Engaging Underrepresented Populations in Environmental Action through Mentoring, Geospatial Technology and Digital Media Storytelling

2022 - 2026

This project seeks to address several challenges simultaneously: there is a need to improve the diversity of learners and workers in environmentally-focused STEAM (i.e., science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics) careers and educational programs, a need to broaden participation in community environmental action, and a need to train future environmentally-focused STEAM workers in effective science communication.

Read More

Engaging Blind, Visually Impaired, and Sighted Students in STEM with Storytelling through Podcasts

2022 - 2025

This project will broaden participation in STEM for blind and visually impaired (BVI) and sighted upper elementary students through engagement with podcast technology. BVI individuals are significantly underrepresented in the STEM workforce. Research has shown that BVI students face many obstacles in pursuing education pathways to STEM fields, beginning in early education. These obstacles include negative attitudes of both students and teachers regarding the ability for BVI persons to engage in STEM careers, and the lack of BVI-accessible STEM resources in classrooms.

Read More

A Networked Improvement Community Approach to School-wide Transformation, Teacher Agency, and Minoritized Students’ Climate Science Learning and Belonging

2021 - 2025

Incorporating urgent issues of social and environmental justice into environmental science teaching can harness youth’s real-world interests and improve their engagement, learning, sense of belonging, and career interests. This may be especially true for students who are directly experiencing the intertwined burdens of structural racism and environmental injustice. This project will adapt and extend successful Solar Suitcase curricula that explicitly link technology learning experiences to environmental science and social purpose.

Read More

Design and Pitch Challenges in STEM: Merging Entrepreneurship and Mathematics Learning

2021 - 2024

To compete in a continually changing and increasingly technology-focused career landscape, students will need a deep, conceptual, and applied understanding of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Yet, many students, especially students from underrepresented populations, perceive  STEM to be disconnected from their interests and career aspirations. New curricular approaches are needed, especially in mathematics, that increase students’ career interest and engagement in STEM, while also supporting the learning of rich and targeted STEM content.

Read More

Collaborative Research: Minoritized Youth Computer Science Learning, Belonging and Career Interest: Coding and Creating with Beats

2021 - 2025

Computer science knowledge and skills are essential in the digital world. Despite progress in the availability of computer science (CS) coursework in secondary school settings, a number of student groups remain substantially underrepresented in computing. This project aims to broaden youth participation in computing by focusing on innovative technology experiences centered around coding-based music. The project will engage Black, Latinx, and female youth during the critical middle school years when many students decide whether future opportunities in CS merit consideration.

Read More

Middle School Teacher and Student's Experiences with Artificial Intelligence via Computational Cameras

2020 - 2024

Artificial intelligence (AI) technology applied to images and video is transforming society with broad applications to many social and economic sectors. To develop a citizenry that will participate in this technological revolution, it is essential to develop learning experiences for K-12 learners on the foundations of AI literacy in order to adequately prepare the workforce of the future. Supporting the teaching of AI concepts in the K-12 curriculum requires integrating knowledge from multiple disciplines.

Read More

Network Science for All: Positioning Underserved Youth for Success in Pursuing STEM Pathways

2020 - 2024

Boston University, in partnership with Sociedad Latina, will investigate the role that a middle school network science curriculum plays as both an input and outcome of science learning. This project is funded by the Innovative Technology Experiences for Students and Teachers (ITEST) program, which supports projects that build understandings of practices, program elements, contexts and processes contributing to increasing students' knowledge and interest in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) and information and communication technology (ICT) careers.

Read More

Digital Mathematics Storytelling: Fraction Stories from Urban Emergent Communities

2020 - 2025

Many elementary school children in urban communities are not given the opportunity to relate what they see in school to the mathematics they see in their homes, families, and communities. This project will help solve this problem through a digital storytelling approach. It will investigate how elementary grade children can use mobile technology to create digital mathematics stories. These stories will be made from videos, photos, and audio. Students will connect mathematics from out-of-school settings to the mathematics they learn in school.

Read More

Voices to Hear (V2H): Native American Youth Learning About Environmental Sciences, Related Careers and Engaging Their Communities through Podcasts

2018 - 2023

This project will advance efforts of the Innovative Technology Experiences for Students and Teachers (ITEST) program to better understand and promote practices that increase student motivations and capacities to pursue careers in fields of science, technology, engineering, or mathematics (STEM). Voices to Hear (V2H) will use the oral tradition of storytelling to empower Native American students (middle school, high school and college) to engage in environmental decision-making and scientific communication, while building a stronger sense of their ethnic identity.

Read More