MySciLife

This video offers a simulation of MySciLife, a proposed social learning environment where K-12 students design and maintain science "identities" to LIVE and LEARN. This simulation is an approximation of the planned capabilities of MySciLife and is subject to change. MySciLife was a 2010 finalist entry in the MacArthur Foundation/HASTAC Digital Media and Learning Competition (http://dmlcompetition.net/) and is currently seeking funding from multiple sources. Please feel free to comment on the MySciLife video.

Learn more about MyScLife at http://www.myscilife.com/

Read a full description of the project below.

MySciLife project collaborators:
Candace Hackett Shively, TeachersFirst/The Source for Learning, Inc. (www.teachersfirst.com)

Jim Dachos, GlogsterEDU (edu.glogster.com)
Oliver Dreon, Jr., Millersville University
Louise Maine, Punxsutawney Area High School (PA)


Brief description of MySciLife:
MySciLife is a social learning environment where students design and maintain science "identities" to LIVE and LEARN. Students LIVE as a science concept, creating their identities using status updates, interactions, and a full range of digital media within the MySciLife platform. MySciLife is personal, dynamic science learning, interaction, and assessment.


Detailed description:
What would it be like to LIVE as a cell? Would Jupiter respond to a wall post by Copernicus? What/whom would a savannah "friend"? Would an ant read an atom's updates? Would a cancer cell debunk a gene's error? With K-12 students learning and LIVING roles as science concepts, science and learning take on a MySciLife of their own.

MySciLife draws students into a digital world where they LIVE what they learn, visualizing themselves as scientific concepts, objects, or people. Built within the popular GlogsterEDU (edu.glogster.com) learning environment, including extensive multimedia, and supplemented by TeachersFirst's (www.teachersfirst.com) classroom resources and professional development, MySciLife is reminiscent of popular social networking spaces but is a safe, education-friendly environment where students design and maintain "science identities." They creatively define identities via profiles, activities, and digital media shared as "living" concepts/personas, experiencing science through social connections appealing to both girls and boys. The MySciLife platform leverages tools such as microblogging "updates" and digital storytelling, engaging students to LIVE the science they learn. Within a private and safe community that can be monitored directly by teachers, students' "science identities" interact and connect with those created by other students. MySciLife also allows students to critique each other's online representations and defend their characterizations by citing evidence, data, and research.

MySciLife captures students' creativity with digital media as a dynamic process and ongoing assessment of scientific understanding. Whether portraying the role of an abstract scientific concept or as a concrete animal or body organ, students' learning and assessment become a living experience of science in a social, collaborative environment. Maintaining a MySciLife role makes science learning a longitudinal process rather than a static project in time. MySciLife students direct their conceptual roles, adding a new layer of thinking as they communicate and LIVE science. MySciLife brings science to life.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• myscilife

[happinesson]

good simulation, interactive website that promotes digital learning.. Great! Love knowledge!

[erwink5]

I love how SciLife allows students to incorporate what they are learning immediately into the project they are creating. They can research, learn, create, save and share. This brings rigor and relevance into the projects that students are creating. Glogster EDU being used as the My SciLife creation tool was a fantastic use of the both tools.

[didarrow]

I am impressed with how this is inquiry based, requires independent research, and creates an opportunity for students to demonstrate understanding through a variety of process/product styles. Teachers are discovering a way to facilitate learning in a meaningful manner. Incorporating movies, chatting, audio and social networking into the learning experience is a very clever way to capture the minds of a "digital native". Phenomenal!

[sgorski01]

I was fascinated with how the student's research and knowledge could be incorporated into the page - and how other students could participate as well. The hardest thing for students will be to decide who or what they will want to "be" in their SciLife. Great idea.