A Digital IdeaKeeper For K-12: NSDL Scaffolded Portal Services for Information Analysis and Synthesis

Regents Of The University Of Michigan - Ann Arbor, Ann Arbor MI

Investigators

Abstract

While national organizations such as the AAAS and the NRC can call for K-12 students to carry out science inquiry activities, students must be provided with supports for such challenging intellectual activity. Digital libraries, such as the National Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Education Digital Library (NSDL) can be a vital part of science inquiry by giving students access to range of scientific information and resources: websites, data sets, images, etc. In reality, NSDL-compliant digital libraries, in particular, must go beyond simply services that support students in finding information and also provide scaffolded services to support students in analyzing and synthesizing the information they find in their searches with respect to the driving questions they are investigating in their science inquiry projects. This project addresses the needs to (1) design and build the IdeaKeeper, a specialized scaffolded NSDL portal and services for K-12 science learners and (2) deploy versions of IdeaKeeper in Detroit middle school classrooms to assess the impact of such supportive digital library services on learning. IdeaKeeper incorporates scaffolds, or software features to support students in analyzing library resources and synthesizing the information into arguments addressing their driving questions. By incorporating IdeaKeeper into science curriculum units, IdeaKeeper is classroom-tested to assess the effectiveness of the analysis/synthesis scaffolds and to articulate new scaffolds and capabilities extending current learner-centered digital library projects. Thus the impact of the IdeaKeeper project includes: - the specialized IdeaKeeper portal and associated services as components for the NSDL for other learners to use and other researchers to extend with new functionalities and scaffolds. - the demonstration of how an NSDL-compliant set of services can indeed support K-12 science learning. The impact of the IdeaKeeper scaffolds and functionality is assessed and articulated in terms of how well they support students in doing information analysis/synthesis and how much students learn about information analysis/synthesis. - the IdeaKeeper project acts as a guidepost to what new services are still needed to more effectively support science inquiry and science learning in K-12.