Using Technology to Explore Place and Culture

• In Event: Connecting Learners to Place, Space, and Personal Experience With Technology and New Media

Abstract

Objectives: This project focuses on the use of technology to foster connections between the cultural significance of a local historically significant creek with Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM). Using iPads, middle-school youth from a Native American community in the inland northwest explored cultural and environmental aspects of the creek simultaneously. We designed the curriculum to focus on the ancestral significance of the creek in terms of food acquisition and preparation, environmental health and relationship with the creek today, and envisioning what it could be in the future. The youth compared availability of traditional foods such as salmon, roots, berries, herbs, and game in the past to the present. Furthermore, the youth investigated the environmental health of the creek and surrounding ecosystems and future impact. In this presentation, we highlight how the youth used iPads to explore the surrounding ecosystem.

Perspectives: Technology can play an important role in in engaging learners and support learner interaction (Koschmann, Myers, Feltovich, & Barrows, 1994). Carefully designed technology can be used to link people within a community to both in and out of school learning experiences (Carroll & Rosson, 1996; Hoadley, Honwad, & Tamminga, 2010). In the curriculum, we used iPads for two purposes: 1) exploring place; and 2) connecting cultural aspects to science learning.

Methods and Data Sources: We gave the youth iPads and asked them to engage in a scavenger hunt. The scavenger hunt involved a list of ecosystem elements that the students would explore with their iPads and also their five senses (sound, sight, touch smell and taste). The scavenger hunt was designed so that students use their iPads to take pictures, video and audio-recordings of different elements within the ecosystem. The students were divided into groups. We used a video camera to follow one group of students (n=4) throughout the enactment of the curriculum.

Results: Using the video recording we observed to what extent of time students were completely engaged, partially engaged, or not engaged at all. We determined a student to be completely engaged when the student was observing keenly while peers might be talking, or interacting with the facilitator. A student was coded as partially engaged when the student appeared to be not paying attention while peers were talking or while the facilitator was interacting with other students. A student was coded as not engaged at all when the student appeared to have abandoned the task at hand. Our initial findings suggest that the students were completely engaged throughout the enactment of the curriculum.

Scholarly significance: Using technology for designing educational experiences for Native American students presents a unique set of challenges (Cajete, 1999). Norberg-Hodge (1991) describes how a self-sustaining and ecologically balanced society in an indigenous community in Asia was almost completely destroyed in a short period with the introduction of culturally inappropriate technological designs. This study is significant as it offers an approach to negotiate use of technology for connected learning among indigenous students, while prioritizing cultural values and sensitivity.

Authors

• Sameer Honwad, University of New Hampshire

• Anne L. Kern, University of Idaho

• Melinda Howard, University of Idaho

• Ernie Rasmussen, University of Idaho