Developing Musical Intuitions in Rock Band (2008 - present)
Why is it that the same youth that are refusing to go to their weekly piano lessons are relentless in their rehearsal of ‘rhythmic’ video games like Rock Band? While these games are receiving dozens of awards for excellence, hit over 6 million song downloads, and are breaking sales records for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 consoles, they have received very little attention from game scholars and educators. This study explores the development of musical intuitions through Rock Band play in the after-school hours at Boys and Girls Club. Issues of transfer, learning trajectories, pedagogy, collaboration, and development of expertise are being explored.
Scaffolding Creative Production in Virtual Worlds (2008 - present)
Constructionism posits that people learn best when engaged in design activities. Over the past 20 years, numerous types of creative software and digital manipulatives have been created with this theory of learning in mind. Yet, observation of these tools in after-school communities reveal that simply having this software available is not enough for youth to become designers. Videogames, by contrast, expertly craft ways of scaffolding support. Consequently, the intersection of creative production and gaming spaces seems especially fortuitous. By way of exploring this intersection, we have designed and tested these ideas within the Quest Atlantis (QA) Media Village -- a virtual space where players get drawn into creative production through gaming narratives.
Scratch Community (2004 - 2007)
The MIT Media Laboratory and UCLA developed and studied Scratch, a new networked, media-rich programming environment, designed specifically to enhance the development of technological fluency at Computer Clubhouses. Scratch adds programmability to the media-rich activities that are most popular among Clubhouse youth. In particular, we studied how Clubhouse youth (ages 10-18) learn to use Scratch to design and program new types of digital arts projects, such as music compositions and special-effects videos created with programmable image-processing filters and animated characters.
TechnoProbes (2004-2006)
Discussions about the digital divide often portray low income youth as lacking access to computer technology. Inspired by Bill Gaver’s work with cultural probes we asked Clubhouse youths to photograph and describe their access and interest to various meaningful technologies in their lives at home, in schools and other places in their community.
Programming with a Purpose (2004-2006)
Little attention has been paid to the fact that even with increased access to Internet and other communication technologies, college students often lack sophisticated technology skills. In response, we created a service-learning program, "Programming Partnerships," which placed undergraduates with no prior programming experience in the Computer Clubhouse network and investigated their changing perceptions as technologists and increasing fluency with technology.
Programming Partnerships
Mentoring interactions and relationships are corner stones of most successful community projects. With "Programming Partnerships," we created a service-learning program which placed undergraduates with no prior programming experience in the Computer Clubhouse network and investigated how they changed their perceptions of mentoring.
New Technologies & Informal Learning
image by Misterbisson (c) 2006
