Gearing Up: New Technologies for Participant-Collected Data

Session Submission Type: Symposium

Abstract

Emerging technologies are making it possible for research participants to collect real-time data about their own teaching and learning activities. The first-person perspective and depth of data captured by wearable/hands-free digital cameras, voice recorders, GPS trackers, and other new devices is astounding, but these technologies are also problematic in their implementation and the resulting surplus of complex data. Additionally, important epistemological and social questions arise when using participant rather than researcher-collected data. This symposium presents five diverse studies using participant-collected data gathered with new technologies: teachers thinking on their feet in classrooms, students exploring nature on a wilderness fieldtrip, children building bicycles and re-learning to navigate their community, archeologists mapping ancient spaces during fieldwork, and families gardening at home.

Sub Unit

• SIG-Advanced Technologies for Learning

Cosponsors

• SIG-Informal Learning Environment Research

• SIG-Learning Sciences

Chair

• Jessica Umphress, Northwestern University

Papers

• Auto-Ethnographic Access to Doing, Showing, and Learning in Archeological Fieldwork - Jasmine Y. Ma, New York University; Rogers P. Hall, Vanderbilt University

• Elementary Teachers’ In-the-Moment Seeing of Children’s Science Thinking - Melissa J. Luna, West Virginia University

• Capturing the Journey on Foot and Bike: Youth Collecting Mobility Data in and Around Their Community - Katherine Headrick Taylor, Northwestern University

• Growing Together and Knowing Together: Epistemological Practices in Everyday Family Activities Like Gardening - Jessica Umphress, Northwestern University

Discussant

• Philip L. Bell, University of Washington