This article presents a novel digital method of capturing finger-based gestures on touchscreen devices for the purpose of exploring tracing gestures in educational research. Given that tracing has been found to support cognition, learning, and problem solving in educational settings, data related to the performance of these gestures are…

The paper proposes a framework for thinking about digital technologies, including AI, in education. The framework combines Don Ihde's postphenomenology and Seymour Papert's constructionism. The former is rooted in the philosophy of technology, the latter -- in education and technology. The intersections between the two theories have been mentioned…

Every educator knows the sinking feeling of a lesson gone wrong. As teachers look around the room and realize that many of their students are just not getting it, they often feel like failures. However, the struggle students experience as they persevere through high-quality challenging tasks is not a sign of failure, but rather a key aspect of…

Now in its sixth year of implementation, the TECHFIT approach involves having individuals and teams of middle school teachers successfully complete a week-long, professional development (PD) workshop through which they acquire the essential skills that contribute to the task of innovating an exergame. An exergame is a technology-supported fitness…

Computational thinking and activity are vital aspects of what it means to conduct scientific and mathematical work. In light of this, some propose that students' mathematical education should include an integration of computing into their mathematical experiences, giving students opportunities to engage with computational tools as they reason…

This tutorial uses publicly available data from drug makers and the Food and Drug Administration to guide learners to estimate the confidence intervals of COVID-19 vaccine efficacy rates with a Bayesian framework. Under the classical approach, there is no probability associated with a parameter, and the meaning of confidence intervals can be…

This design case chronicles the efforts of an interdisciplinary team of researchers as they collaborated with middle grades science teachers and students to build and refine an epidemic disease curriculum module. The initial five-day design was delivered in five science classrooms at three nearby schools where researcher classroom observations and…

The ideas of computational thinking (CT) and computer science (CS) are increasingly being integrated into K-12 education. Yet, insufficient attention exists regarding access and exposure of CT and CS for students with disabilities. In this Technology in Action, the authors sought to present an argument--as well as actual activities--for teachers…

As I approach my 70th year in physics, let me tell my younger colleagues about my adventures with computation. When I was 14, my father gave me a slide rule because I appeared to be headed toward a career in physics. Since then, I have had experience with many other calculating devices.

In this article, we demonstrate the use of a simple pendulum to explore the concepts of kinematics and dynamics. A simple homemade pendulum and a phone-based accelerometer are used to determine, at various points in time, the acceleration of a moving train. The dynamical and kinematics data from the homemade pendulum and the accelerator can then…

Public administration is struggling to contend with a substantial shift in practice fueled by the accelerating adoption of information technology. New skills, competencies and pedagogies are required by the field to help overcome the data-skills gap. As a means to address these deficiencies, we introduce the Data Science Literacy Framework, a…

Coding is a process often associated with computers. Nevertheless, coding is a thought process that can be mastered even without a computer. In NSW, primary students are introduced to computational and algorithmic thinking as early as Stage 1. Yet, teaching coding to young students is not always easy for teachers, mostly because the process is…

When using multiple imputation, users often want to know how many imputations they need. An old answer is that 2-10 imputations usually suffice, but this recommendation only addresses the efficiency of point estimates. You may need more imputations if, in addition to efficient point estimates, you also want standard error (SE) estimates that would…

A well known physics problem is to calculate the friction forces required to support a ladder against a wall. A more tractable problem is to calculate the friction forces needed to support an inclined beam on a ball or a cylinder. In the latter case there are three rather than two points of sliding support. Measurements and calculations are…

Control systems are becoming ever more commonly used in everyday life. This is true both in industry and in the domestic domain, in the form of e.g., smart home systems. The quality of such systems can be increased by using formal verification methods, such as the model checking technique, to make sure that the designed system fulfills all user…