CCT in Amsterdam

Posted: November 14, 2008
Director Shelley Pasnik shared insights from CCT's work in understanding 21st century skills and their impact on STEM education at The Dutch Experience International Summit in Amsterdam, November 10 and 11. Her poster explored CCT's collaborations with Cisco Systems (1, 2) and the Partnership for 21st Century Skills (1, 2, 3). She attended the conference with EDC colleagues Bob Spielvogel and Joyce Malyn-Smith.
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Daniel's Class Photo from Ankara, Turkey

Posted: November 14, 2008
Senior researcher Daniel Light has sent this photo back from his travels to Turkey. Dr. Light and researcher Scott Strother are conducting site visits to Turkish schools as part of CCT international evaluation work for Intel Teach®.
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CCT quoted in Edutopia article on Serious Gaming

Posted: August 27, 2008
Edutopia takes a look at serious games in its August/September issue. Cornelia Brunner, CCT deputy director,is quoted in the article that highlights efforts to connect gaming activity with classroom assessment. Read the article in latest issue of Edutopia.

Daniel Light presents at Bangalore education conference

Posted: August 20, 2008
At the Quest conference in Bangalore, India, on August 22, Daniel Light, senior research scientist, is delivering a workshop presentation "Evaluating Educational Technology: How Do We Know It's Working?" that describes CCT's evaluation approach
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On the Web, a Nonpartisan Look at Those Partisan Campaign Ads

Posted: September 12, 2008
Context matters. Presidential races may be always on YouTube, but as the New York Times writes, there's something to be said for the historical context that the Living Room Candidate provides. CCT is providing formative research to support the Museum of the Moving Image's development of educational content for site. Photo: Democratic National Committee

Book Revisits Gender and Gaming

Posted: October 1, 2008
Ten years after its groundbreaking original highlighted the ways gender stereotyping and related social issues permeate digital game play, the followup Beyond Barbie and Mortal Kombat (edited by Yasmin B. Kafai, Carrie Heeter, Jill Denner, and Jennifer Y. Sun) brings together new media theorists, game designers, educators, psychologists, and industry professionals to look at how gender intersects with the broader contexts of digital games today: gaming, game industry and design, and serious games. CCT Deputy Director Cornelia Brunner returns with "Games and Technological Desire: Another Decade," a chapter examines why the call for gender-neutral games remains fresh and how small shifts show signs of progress.
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Putting the Election into Context Using Technology

Posted: October 7, 2008
EdWeek explores how teachers can use technology to discus, dissect, and think critically about electoral politics and its place in the media in deeper, richer ways. CCT Director Shelley Pasnik offers her perspective as part of the piece.
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CCT Named National Center on Instructional Technology

Posted: September 9,2008
CCT has been awarded a $9.2 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education to serve as a National R&D Center on Instructional Technology, taking a close look at how game-based activities can aid science and literacy instruction. We are collaborating with colleagues at EDC to develop and pilot-test a series of game modules—built around the Nintendo DS—that plugs inquiry-based game activities into traditional classroom practice. Rather than stand alone, the game modules will fit into regular curricula and will take aim at the science misconceptions, reading difficulties, and motivational issues that hamper student learning and complicate science teaching.
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Transparency in Schools

Posted: September 5, 2008
LA Times quotes CCT in article that looks at how technology is allowing parents to peer into the school day.

"There's this black box -- a child goes away and comes home, what happened during this time?" said Shelley Pasnik, director of the nonprofit Center for Children and Technology in New York. "Now, new information and communications technology allows for the mystery of what transpires on any given day to unravel."

Read the Los Angeles Times article.

CCT Leads Four-Year Effort to Broaden the Reach of Math for All

Posted: September 8, 2008
With school districts nationwide pressed to increase access to significant mathematics content for students with disabilities, two NSF-funded EDC projects (Math for All and Addressing Accessibility in Mathematics) created programs to help both general and special educators fill this void. After showing promise in initial implementation research, CCT and two other EDC centers (COPE and ERO) have received funding from NSF to further investigate how these programs are being put into practice by district-based teacher leaders and what kinds of training, support, and resources they need to implement them effectively.

Social Issue Games Inspire O'Connor, Grapple with Impact

Posted: June 5, 2008
This year's Games for Change Festival (June 2-4) proved how much discussion of serious games has expanded. Retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor underscored the potential of games as learning tools by announcing Our Courts, an interactive civics initiative aimed at engaging middle grade students both in school and at home. CCT is contributing instructional design expertise to this ambitious project. CCT also figured directly into the festival conversation as Director Shelley Pasnik lent our perspective on ways to capture and evaluate the impact of social issue games in the panel discussion on "Measuring Impact." Our partners Global Kids shared their work in a discussion on youth-created games, while Breakthrough demoed their immigration game, which we recently evaluated. Read more about the conference at G4C website. Check out our work in TV, Media and Games.

JAM 2008 - Transforming STEM

Posted: June 16, 2008
The National Science Foundation's Division of Human Resource Development held its Joint Annual Meeting (JAM), which gathers the many project leaders whose programs fall under division's direction. This year's theme is "Transforming STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics). While CCT Senior Scientist Babette Moeller did not present at the meeting, her work is well reprsented within the Division. The User-Centered Digital Library Project is enabling users (teachers and students with disabilities) to conduct searches for accessible content on the Teachers' Domain digital library that is formatted to meet specific students’ needs. In addition, her Evaluation of EAST is examining a five-year effort to increase the number and diversity of students with disabilities receiving STEM degrees in Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island. Both projects are funded through NSF DHRD's Research in Disabilities in Education program.

Presenting about Evaluation at Scale in Vienna

Posted: June 30, 2008
We're in Vienna, Austria this week (senior rsearcher Harouna Ba that is) to present at AACE's ED-MEDIA World Conference on Educational Multimedia, Hypermedia &Telecommunications. Dr. Ba presents a paper on Tuesday, July 1, detailing our ongoing Cisco 21S Initiative evaluation in Mississippi and Louisiana. Harouna will describe lessons learned about effective ways to implement, evaluate, scale, and sustain a large scale education technology project, discussing research methodologies and findings from the first two years of the project and available literature. (The paper co-authors include, Alison Boyd, Terri Meade, Tara Weatherholt, and Ashley Lewis, as well as William Fowler of Cisco Systems.)

Picturing Modern America Selected for EDSITEment

Posted: July 14, 2008
Picturing Modern America was recently selected for inclusion on EDSITEment as "one of the best online resources for education in the humanities." EDSITEment is a clearinghouse for teachers, parents, and students across the country seeking humanities education websites. Picturing Modern America, which was created in 2003, was nominated for inclusion in response to an open call for nominations posted on humanities listservs. The site was then reviewed by a peer review panel for "intellectual quality, content, design, and most importantly, classroom impact."

Developing Indicators for 21st Century Learning

Posted: June 1, 2008
Cisco Systems has tapped CCT to develop and test a series of indicators that monitor change in how educational systems prepare administrators, teachers, and students for the 21st century. In addition, CCT will also determine the most efficient way to implement them. This research builds on our ongoing evaluation of the Cisco 21S Initiative, a large-scale reform effort bringing technology and professional development to schools in Mississippi and Louisiana. This new project extends our investigations into defining and assessing 21st century skills.