Fostering Joint Parent/Child Engagement in Preschool Computational Thinking by Leveraging Digital Media, Mobile Technology, and Library Settings in Urban and Rural Communities

2020 - 2023

This project will teach foundational computational thinking (CT) concepts to preschoolers by  creating a series of mobile apps to guide families through sequenced sets of videos and  hands-on activities.  To support families at home it would also develop a new library model to build librarians? computational thinking  content knowledge and self-efficacy so they can support parents? efforts with their children.

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Project BUILD (Building Using an Interactive Learning Design)

2017 - 2021
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This project will advance efforts of the Innovative Technology Experiences for Students and Teachers (ITEST) program to better understand and promote practices that increase students' motivations and capacities to pursue careers in fields of science, technology, engineering, or mathematics (STEM) by bringing together youth (grades 2-5), their families, librarians, and professional engineers in an informal environment centered on engaging youth with age-appropriate, technology-rich STEM learning experiences fundamental to the engineering design process.

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Rural Girls Engaged in Math and Science Plus Technology

2017 - 2022

This project will advance efforts of the Innovative Technology Experiences for Students and Teachers (ITEST) program to better understand and promote practices that increase students' motivations and capacities to pursue careers in fields of science, technology, engineering, or mathematics (STEM) by engaging in hands-on field experience, laboratory/project-based entrepreneurship tasks and mentorship experiences.

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Opportunities to Learn: Creative Science Through Inquiry, a Middle Grades Teaming Framework

2016 - 2021

This project will advance efforts of the Innovative Technology Experiences for Students and Teachers (ITEST) program to better understand and promote practices that increase students' motivations and capacities to pursue careers in fields of science, technology, engineering, or mathematics (STEM) by developing opportunities for students to learn creatively in science through inquiry.

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Expanding Geospatial Technology Career Development for High School Students Through Teacher Professional Development

2015 - 2020
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The Power of Data (POD) project is designed to increase secondary student awareness of and interest in careers that use geospatial technology (GST) and data; increase their knowledge of educational pathways to enter these careers; and develop their 21st century workforce skills. Building on successful implementation in Arizona, the 4-year project will be carried out on a larger scale. The project will use a train-the-trainer approach involving some 30 teacher educators, 90 teachers and 27,000 students.

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Actualizing STEM Potential in the Mississippi Delta

2015 - 2022

This project will advance efforts of the Innovative Technology Experiences for Students and Teachers (ITEST) program to better understand and promote practices that increase students' motivations and capacities to pursue careers in fields of science, technology, engineering, or mathematics (STEM) by investigating the effectiveness of an existing collaborative robotics program. The program will positively influence the engineering self-efficacy and orientation to STEM majors with African American students living in an underserved region of the United States, the Mississippi Delta.

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Innovative Technology-Enabled Astronomy for Middle Schools II (ITEAMS II)

2014 - 2019

Nationwide, middle-school youth from underrepresented communities have few opportunities to engage in authentic STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) investigations that build on the students' intrinsic interests in space science and robotics to increase their interests in both ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) and STEM careers. ITEAMS II is a collaborative project of science educators and researchers at the Harvard College Observatory and the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory.

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GIS/T Resources and Applications for Career Education (GRACE)

2014 - 2018

The GIS Resources and Applications for Career Education (GRACE) project builds upon a recent NSF-funded project, the Mayors Youth Technology Corps (MYTC), that developed a model of geographic information systems and technology (GIS/T) based education. MYTC developed a model of purposeful applications of GIS/T-based education for STEM careers in the workplace that provided youth in economically disadvantaged communities experience using and applying GIS/T to real world situations.

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The CryptoClub: Extending Learning with Student-Generated Tutorials

2013 - 2019

In existing CryptoClub after school programs, middle school students use mathematics to make and break secret codes. The CryptoClub website has tools for encrypting, messages to crack, treasure hunts and other activities. In this project, the learning in fifteen Crypto Clubs is extended by having the students generate tutorials that explain how they solve mathematics and cryptographic problems. The flexibility of the after school setting provides the opportunity to experiment with content and technology.

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