Work at UC Berkeley

(Warning - This document contains dated information.)

Over the summer of 1995 I got interested in developing educational software. It occurred to me that perhaps I should learn something about education first, so I enrolled in the master's program in the Graduate School of Education at UC Berkeley. I started out in the Education in Math, Science and Technology (EMST) track, and joined the ThinkerTools research group, run by my advisor Prof. Barbara White. After the first year at Berkeley, two things became very clear to me: (a) in order to really make a difference integrating technology in education you need to be on the front lines, and (b) I couldn't resist the allure of becoming a part-time high school teacher. I therefore decided to switch to the Masters and Credential in Science and Math Education (MACSME) teacher training track. I received my MA in Education and teaching credential from Berkeley in the spring of 1998.

Master's Project

For my MA, I took a look at how well the alternate laws in the Model Design feature described above fit the misconceptions of sixth-graders. Here's the abstract from my thesis, entitled "Facilitating Model Development Through Simulation: Formalizing Student Preconceptions Into Physical Laws":

Student preconceptions about force and motion are typically contextualized (tied to specific situations and scenarios) unlike the classic, general purpose laws taught in physics. However, constructivist pedagogy should make use of these preconceptions, developing them into (rather than replacing them with) accepted models. The ThinkerTools force and motion simulation software was augmented to add a ÒModel DesignÓ feature, allowing it to simulate common non-Newtonian ideas about the behavior of objects. Christina Schwarz (1998) built a model-centric force and motion curriculum around this new version of the simulation software, and tried it out in several middle school classrooms. The results of this trial guided a redesign of the Model Design feature, recharacterizing its alternative law options to reduce contextualization and increase the focus on mechanism and causality. Interviews were then conducted with a small group of sixth grade students to determine whether the contextualized preconceptions they brought with them to the classroom could still guide them as they chose from this new set of alternate physical laws. Once each student had developed a complete model of force and motion, they were able to conduct microworld experiments based on that model to determine whether the objects in the simulation behaved as they would expect real objects to, and whether the experimental results agreed with their contextualized predictions. Where there was disagreement, the students revisited both their predictions and their law choices to resolve the discrepancies. The results suggest that students were able to make use of their preconceptions in evaluating physical laws, even though these preconceptions were highly contextualized and lacked consistency. A few students demonstrated exciting conceptual progress toward understanding both modeling and physics despite the brevity of the interviews.

SCI-WISE Project

For a while after I graduated, I continued as a sort of "Graduate Student Emeritus" with the ThinkerTools research group. The group's latest project is an Intelligent Agent-based system in Java that will provide advice to middle school students conducting independent research projects. There's one agent for each area of expertise within the domain of scientific inquiry (i.e., one for each phase of Barbara White's Inquiry Cycle, one for each area of metacognition, etc.) Eric Eslinger, a second-year SESAME PhD student and an incredibly gifted software developer (for his age), is writing nearly all of the code. Since the project is very content-centric, the whole research group is collaborating on developing the advice, it's queueing and organization. Someday this "knowledge engineering group" will be extended to include classroom teachers and students, as the entire system is designed for ease of modification. If you're interested, click here to download a copy of my brief design overview in Adobe Acrobat format. If you don't yet have Acrobat Reader (YO! IT'S FREE), you should download a copy. Lots of stuff is published on the Web in this cross-platform format.

Project Sputnik

During the Spring 1997 term I took Marcia Linn's EMST291B - Cognitive Consequences of Technology in Education. I did an interesting final project centered around teaching physics students about Geostationary Orbits. The whole thing's done in HTML, so you can check it out. Unfortunately, I never finished it, so it doesn't do a very good job of coaching you through the math or pulling it all together. I think I proved the concept, but it would be cool if I could find the time to turn this into something I could use in my own classroom.

Please e-mail comments regarding this web site to: schmed@transpac.com.

© 1998-2001, Chris Schneider. All Rights Reserved World Wide.

20 May 2001