Using Physical Activity Data Technologies to Capture Pockets of Immersive Experience at School

• In Event: Of Bodies and Minds: Immersive Physical Sensor Technologies and STEM Learning

Abstract

The standard image of “schools” that often comes to mind is one of teachers, students, desks, books, etc. on the one hand, and classrooms, libraries, computer labs, auditoriums, and other enclosed spaces on the other. As such, schools, have not always fit the sense of “immersion” that has been the primary interest of this SIG in the past. Yet, as this SIG broadens its view of what, when, and where immersion takes place, we too can re-examine school as a space where “pockets” of rich immersive experience already naturally take place. We can see this even more clearly when we look beyond the classrooms and into the many brief, loosely-structured activities that students outside the physical walls of the school building. For example, as part of a given school day, children can and do participate in recess, sports teams, PE classes, outdoor field trips, etc. For many children, these are the favored parts of the school day as they are a time for students to take on and develop new and productive ways of interacting, thinking, and identifying with their peers and the space around them (e.g., Nasir & Hand, 2008). However, due to a number of factors, ranging from their brief amount of time to the lack of accountability for maintaining records, these pockets of immersive experience have an ephemeral quality. Beyond pure recollection, there simply is not much material left from these activities for students to later revisit.

It is possible to change that. In this presentation, I will discuss a strategy for helping students to obtain a layer of ‘informational residue’ (Lee & Drake, 2013a) from these brief pockets of immersive experience: Equip students with mobile and wearable devices that allow them to continue to fully attend to and engage with the activities at hand, but at the same time automatically record data about their movements while in those pockets of immersion. These data can then be transformed into objects of inspection, discussion, and reflection. To illustrate how this looks and what learning opportunities are afforded, I provide examples from design experiments (Brown, 1992; Cobb, Confrey, diSessa, Lehrer, & Schauble, 2003) that my research team has run with youth who have worn various activity tracking technologies and subsequently examined residual body data. The pockets of immersion range from throwing Frisbee to running on a treadmill to playing at recess to even going on an extended science field trip (Lee & DuMont, 2010; Lee & Drake, 2013b). As I will show by way of video clips, transcripts, and observational summary, there are some important similarities with respect to how students engage in inspection of reflections about data from immersive experiences. However, there are important considerations for educators to make, such as the presence of a data interpretation goal or seductive features of the wearable technologies, that can make or break such a data inspection experience.

Author

• Victor R. Lee, Utah State University