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Smart Kindergarten
A UCLA professor is working on set of sensors and data-capture applications to record a school classroom in intimate detail. The project webpage has more information; see also an older story. The professor apparently envisions actually deploying these sensors in a classroom next spring, but doesn't mention what school is willing to participate.
By Christian Mignot
DAILY BRUIN SENIOR STAFF
Electrical engineering Professor Mani Srivastava's seven-year-old daughter Megha provided the initial inspiration for a research project that may provide groundbreaking results in the fields of education and computer science.
Srivastava's purchase of a wireless educational toy that allows parents to survey their child's interactions through a PC spurred him to imagine the larger implications.
Along with his team of faculty assembled from the departments of electrical engineering and computer science and the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, Srivastava plans to outfit an entire first grade classroom - from inanimate objects like wooden building blocks and tabletops to the students themselves - with tiny electronic sensors.
"We want to use these devices in a classroom setting to see what we can infer from student's interactions and how they are associated with academic performance," Srivastava said.
The sensors are part of a new generation of devices that create sensor networks to sample physical environments and collect data.
The lessons this experiment may provide - including potential insight on teaching techniques, the speech of children, and the application of software and hardware in novel environments - have been deemed important enough for the National Science Foundation to provide $1.8 million in funding grants.
Students will wear caps with sensors called "iBadges" pinned to them, Srivastava said. These badges will track the location of the child and the physical orientation of the child's head, as well as capture their speech with small microphones.
Objects, such as puzzle pieces or board games, will be wired with sensors and used on task tables with magnetic systems under them to track location and usage. This will enable researchers to study the processes a student uses to complete tasks set by instructors.
In addition, a series of microphones and cameras will be placed at various locations around the classroom to further monitor students' activities. Srivastava said sound clips gathered from the microphones would enable researchers to study the speech of children - particularly those who are bilingual.
"With the microphones we can tell, for instance, when the students will switch from using English to Spanish or vice versa," he said.
All data collected by sensors, cameras and microphones is routed through a central computer system utilizing software called Sylph, designed by computer science professor Richard Muntz.
"This isn't the traditional kind of data - it is both multimedia and sensor data which is not very precise," Muntz said. "Capturing it and being able to process it is a complex problem."
Muntz said the program is designed to collect queried data from sensors, store data and query archived data once it has been stored. Most importantly, he said the program includes data-mining capabilities, which implies distinguishing patterns among collected data.
"Data mining has been a growing field in the last decade," he said. "Data collections are too overwhelming for humans to study so we are now using programs to help in the assessment."
Researchers from the UCLA Center for the Study of Evaluation of the GSE&IS, which assess the quality of education and standardized testing in the United States, have also been working with Srivastava to determine how the classroom application of sensor technology will affect student learning.
"It's like developing a new thermometer to measure kids interaction," said Gregory Chung, a senior researcher for the CSE.
Chung added that sensors would allow teachers to pay attention to the problems of individual students through the assessment of their performance in small group interaction scenarios.
"The problem for teachers is that they cannot usually pay attention to each student across all groups," he
If you would RTFA you would notice that they are doing this to study learning patterns and advise teachers on what they are doing wrong. Advising CEO's on what they are doing wrong usually ends in somebody getting fired
A traveling salesman selling farming equipment once came across a large, rather unkempt field located near a shabby-looking farmhouse with a few lopsided barns strewn around it. He turned his truck around and drove along the narrow dirt road until he was near the front porch of the house, where he stopped. An aging, dishevelled-looking farmer, prostrated in his unpainted gray rocking chair, was eyeing him lazily as he got out of his vehicle and offered his greetings.
...
"Sir," said the salesman. "I have with me the literature and the know-how of many qualified farming experts, that can teach you how in just a few short years and with almost no initial investment you can turn your farm around and start harvesting the crops that would make you rich beyond your wildest dreams. Would you like to learn how you can improve your business and start making a profit?"
The farmer looked at him with no change of expression, then raised his hand and took the makeshift wooden toothpick that he was chewing out of his mouth.
"Son," he said, "Don't you think I already know how I can improve my business?"
You can throw all kinds of technology at both kids and teachers, but unless the former are motivated to teach, and the latter are motivated to learn, it will fail just like all other educational programs have failed -- be it hands-on science, montessori, three-Rs, and whatever else the smart people with EdD degrees care to come up with.
Education starts at home and at the very core of the society. If the society discourages doing well at school, berates dedicated learners, and offers subtle indoctrination that one doesn't have to be smart or even hard-working to do well in life... well, then whatever insight is obtained in the course of this experiment will be lost on the generation Afternoon Disney Channel.
I know this, for I am a teacher.
If you open yourself to the foo, You and foo become one.
You OBVIOUSLY have never worked in a school.
First off, Teachers are hard enough to find as it is. They are very rarely fired due to underperformance.
Second, the Board of Education for your district would never envision spending the bucks to install these things in classrooms (after all, they SOUND expensive), although would have no problem paying $60,000 for new furniture in the superintendent's office (This actually happened in my district. I kid you not). The fact is that the only chance of a school installing them would be as part of a major school overhaul; schools tend to spend VERY freely during periods of construction, and money is often foolishly spent, because the board has enough trouble as it is with construction issues.
Yes. I work for a school.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
About 10 years ago I worked in a research lab at an education grad school. We were using simulation software to study the way that middle-school kids learned physics. The idea was to try to get kids to build a "mental model" of how basic mechanics works by doing lots of simulations (and some real-world experiments too).
To study how this worked, we'd basically videotape everything: the kids interacting with the software and with each other, the teachers interacting with the class, and so on. Then the slaves^H^H^H^H^H^H grad students would transcribe the tapes and see if they could find instances of kids working out models for the physics. There were also tests at the beginning and end of the semester, in both the classes using software and some "control" classes. I don't think any of the kids or parents objected to the data collection, though I wasn't too involved in that part of the project. There were some privacy guarantees on the release form that the kids' parents had to sign. This was all pretty standard stuff for education researchers who wanted to collect hard data instead of just theorizing.
As an aside, the outcome of the project was a bit unclear, at least to me. The students in the classrooms that had the software definitely learned more physics. However, I always wondered whether that had as much to do with the extra attention they got as with the software. But then, I'm not an education researcher or teacher.
ugh, this is EXACTLY the kind of crap that I can't stand.
disclaimer: I feel that EVERYONE should be given the best education that they can.
What I am against is the fact that you believe that we should put these people in a "less pressure intenesive situation"... What happens when we baby this student all the way through school, he/she gets great marks and does well on their entrance exams (how that would be possible I will never know)... This student gets to college and may even pass there because of their "LD". These people move onto the real world where they have little or no sympathy for those without the ability to work under pressure.
I am a supervisor. We have time deadlines that MUST be met to be in compliance with the law. If my people don't make the goals I set for them we don't do what we need to do and we can be held accountable. So, I get one of these individuals in my area. I have to give him/her a low pressure job to do while everyone else has to carry them? You think that this is acceptable? I don't.
People need to learn that they have to work under whatever situations arise and they need to learn to adapt to those. If they can't, survival of the fittest.
Short-term fixes aren't always your best options.