Posted on Jul. 30th 2005 | Comments Off
The inaugural Tools Workshop, a 3-day intensive to introduce neuroscience and education “tools” (procedures, methods, equipment) to researchers from institutions across the country, took place in July 2005, at Stanford University. Institute staff and scientists presented tools used to measure learning with behavioral and brain-imaging techniques. Participants had a hands-on session to learn one of the software tools, and take this knowledge back to their home institutions.
Posted on Jul. 12th 2005 | Comments Off
Researchers:
Reed Stevens, Tom Satwicz, Laurie McCarthy
Video games are exemplars of the ambivalent status of kids’ everyday activities. On one hand, they are decried as frivolous or dangerous pursuits (Anderson, 2002) and, on the other hand, are celebrated as bridging activities into disciplinary learning in schools (The Education Arcade, 2004). Little ethnographic research has been conducted to explore these issues of relevance and continuity (Squire, 2002). This study is designed to look at kids’ everyday gaming practices with an eye towards how they learn to play games, what resources they bring to their game play, and what they take away from playing video games.
We video record eight focal participants from six families (ages 9-15) over a six-month period in their own homes. The kids in our study are asked to play video games as they normally would. They use their own game systems, computers, and games. Each family is generally visited once per week.
While the kids play, one camera records an image of the room (”in room”); another records the video game (”in game”). The two videos are synchronized and compressed into parallel images. Our analysis begins with the creation of a content log. Later the initial log is used to develop cases that support answers to our research questions.
With each participant we also use Video Traces to conduct artifact based interviews. Here images and videos of in-game play are presented to the participants. They are asked to annotate over the images to help us better understand what aspects of the game they use during their own play.
