Paulo Blikstein

Columbia University | CU · Teachers College

This study investigated the impact of participating in a year-long digital-fabrication course on high-school seniors’ problem-solving skills, with a focus on problems involving mechanistic systems. The research questions centered on whether working in a makerspace impacted students’ abilities to solve such problems and whether the process data gene...

This paper examines the narratives conveyed by three technology leaders of past and present: Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and Salman Khan. Based on frameworks of technology discourse, we employ critical discourse analysis (CDA) to explore how such leaders communicate challenges and potentials of education, and what ideological markers can be discerned....

The recent increase in the spread of disinformation poses dangerous implications for society. This project draws on inoculation theory to design and test an interactive platform based on Large Language Models-Aide-that uses language modeling to educate users on common textual strategies employed in pieces of disinformation. Preliminary user experie...

Disinformation has been fueled in recent years, and inoculation theory offers an approach to supply the tools that will enable citizens to identify disinformation. It proposes that interventions can act like "vaccines" by exposing individuals to controlled doses of false or misleading information. This project draws on that theory to design a conve...

To help youth develop the ability to identify disinformation and impede its spread, we constructed a curriculum unit composed of Agent-Based models that simulate the spread of disinformation in both in-person and online environments. Preliminary evidence shows that learners reflect on cognitive biases upon guided interactions with the models, and t...

We propose an Agent-Based modeling approach to research and instruction on disinformation that can both reproduce the interplay between individuals' actions and effects at a larger scale and visualize complex systems at work. Our design is composed of a curriculum framework and four research-informed NetLogo models, the latter being the focus of th...

Maker education has been extensively documented in developed countries, and research points to benefits for learning and to pitfalls in efforts to democratize those benefits. There are, however, opportunities to investigate those factors in developing countries. In this paper, we examine maker practices in communities in two countries of the Global...

In this work we present PlayData, a web-based tool designed for young learners to create diverse representational forms for data, taking advantage of the flexibility offered by programming tools. PlayData was designed as a modified version of Scratch 3.0, presenting new specialized blocks for importing, analyzing, and representing data, and a table...

Purpose There are several connections between education and disinformation, including the association between years of schooling and vulnerability to unfounded hypothesizing. The purpose of this paper is to inquire into a competing explanation: political leaders might be exploring powerful teaching and learning strategies to disseminate agendas bas...

Essays on the challenges and risks of designing algorithms and platforms for children, with an emphasis on algorithmic justice, learning, and equity. One in three Internet users worldwide is a child, and what children see and experience online is increasingly shaped by algorithms. Though children's rights and protections are at the center of debate...

O artigo investiga a implementação dos laboratórios FabLearn na Rede Municipal de Sobral. Dessa forma, o presente trabalho tem como objetivo retratar o processo de implantação destes laboratórios na educação básica da rede pública do município cearense de Sobral, assim como caracterizar a rede FabLearn e identificar seus contributos para o ensino d...

Science education reform initiatives have been implemented worldwide in recent years focusing on the integration of science and engineering practices into science learning. In this context, one promising area to explore is how the resources provided by makerspaces can promote more meaningful, contextualized, and practice-based ways of teaching and...

This structured poster session brings together seven presentations from middle and low-income countries around the world. While research in the field of learning sciences provides some guidance as to how to design learning environments for transformative action, most of this research is conducted in economically wealthy parts of the world (United S...

Tecnologias digitais são empregadas cada vez em uma escala maior nos ambientes educacionais. Como resultado, empresas e grupos globalmente concentrados passam a fazer parte da vida das pessoas desde os primeiros dias da vida escolar. A maior parte desses produtos tecnológicos chegam à escola por contratos firmados por redes escolares em nome de tod...

Development of sustainable science education reforms requires transformation, and therefore involves integrative approaches that result from collaboration between researchers, teachers and policymakers. Using a DBIR approach, we developed a model for design and implementation of new science standards that addresses three main challenges identified...

What does it mean to become a village that learns? In this paper we document the transformative learning journey of a small Thai village over 24 years, becoming a community that identified, tackled, and iterated on problems, altering their everyday practices and lives. In that process the village shifted from a subsistence agricultural community st...

Automation has played a key role in improving the safety, accuracy, and efficiency of manufacturing and industrial processes and has the potential to greatly increase throughput in the life sciences. However, the lack of accessible entry-point automation hardware in life science research and STEM education hinders its widespread adoption and develo...

New ideas and technologies enable new ways of doing as well as new forms of language. The rise of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is no exception. The implications of changing activity and language take on new gravity in certain fields to which AI is applied, such as education (AIEd). Terms like smart, intelligence, and learning, which had certain mea...

Durante a pandemia de covid-19, expressões como “ensino híbrido”, “educa- ção híbrida” e “aprendizagem híbrida” passaram a fazer parte do vocabulário de educadores, gestores, estudantes e famílias. Escolas e redes foram lançadas em um cenário confuso sobre o termo e sua relação com tecnologias educacio- nais. Tendo em vista a falta de clareza sobre...

Community-generated concepts, namely "germ cells," can be productive to address problem situations. Yet most literature on germ cells accounts for the initial development of concepts and how these create opportunities for learning and concrete application. This taps into only a small part of the potential power of a germ cell to be generative. In t...

Research established that most learners perceive STEM learning environments as settings that exclude diverse ways of thinking. We investigate factors behind this trend in two sites that recently implemented fully-equipped makerspaces, but have deeply different socioeconomic contexts. We identify factors associated with increased self-efficacy and a...

The creation and distribution of disputable information is currently widespread and significant in the political debate. Explanations of this phenomenon usually imply that leaders exploit fragilities of their followers, such as lack of education or plain lack of understanding of the facts. We explore a competing interpretation: using a constructivi...

The ISLS has long been focusing on innovative learning that supports inclusive socio-emotional and collaborative practices, and more recent research has taken up political and ethical dimensions of human learning as central to design, practice, partnership and research. The society is also taking concrete steps towards structural changes in its own...

Freire had an intimate connection with liberation struggles in Africa. In this presentation, discussion will focus on how Freire's work including Pedagogy of the Oppressed was profoundly influenced by African intellectuals including Franz Fanon and Amilcar Cabral. The talk will critically consider the contribution that Freire's work made to nationa...

Today’s debate about education is prone to focusing on system optimization, test score improvement, and budgetary concerns. However, education is much more: it is primarily about a vision for our societies. As we think about a new vision, it has to speak to the ethos of our time. Today’s youth are heavily focused on social change, addressing global...

The production and spread of misinformation are phenomena of rising interest, and scholars in many fields attempt to explain this issue. Indeed, studies shed light on mechanisms that affect the way we interpret reality and create systems of belief that may not be consistent with what is broadly accepted as factual. We investigate potential connecti...

Maker education stands out as an approach to STEM learning that has several benefits. However, despite the recent rise in its popularity, making in education may be excluding some groups of learners. In this poster, we report partial findings of a mixed-methods research project carried out in two high schools serving blue-collar, working-class fami...

Este relatório é fruto de uma parceria do D3e com o Todos Pela Educação e com o Transformative Learning Technology Laboratory, da Universidade de Columbia, nos Estados Unidos. O documento apresenta evidências e propostas para o debate nacio- nal sobre a importância da tecnologia para melhorar o aprendizado na educação básica. São utilizadas as dire...

This open access book contains observations, outlines, and analyses of educational robotics methodologies and activities, and developments in the field of educational robotics emerging from the findings presented at FabLearn Italy 2019, the international conference that brought together researchers, teachers, educators and practitioners to discuss...

Quando ripartiranno i processi di istruzione dopo l'emergenza COVID-19, come saranno le scuole? L'articolo discute le possibilità in due aree che possono aiutare ad immaginare l'apprendimento nel mondo post-pandemia: l'outdoor education e la maker education. La vasta letteratura scientifica sull'outdoor education ne mostra l'efficacia. Nel contesto...

Online learning is an important aspect of higher education today. One-third of college students take at least one course online, and almost 70% of chief academic leaders say that online learning is critical to their long-term strategy [1]. Despite the success and growth of online education, the number of courses that currently offer a hands-on labo...

A diverse group of scholars redefine constructionism—introduced by Seymour Papert in 1980—in light of new technologies and theories. Constructionism, first introduced by Seymour Papert in 1980, is a framework for learning to understand something by making an artifact for and with other people. A core goal of constructionists is to respect learners...

O Movimento Maker tem sido observado pelas instituições educacionais, contribuindo para o crescente interesse pela implantação da educação maker tanto no ensino básico quanto no superior. No entanto, os exemplos dessa implantação mostram que as atividades maker não estão ainda integradas com o currículo, especialmente com as disciplinas de ciência,...

The Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) define "using and developing models" as an essential science and engineering practice. In a week-long science unit using the Bifocal Modeling approach, students perform hands-on experiments, design models and finally interact and compare real data with computational models. In this paper, we describe the...

This year on March 12, 2019, Mike Eisenberg passed away—an enormous loss for the learning arts and sciences community. A computer scientist by vocation, a writer with passionate insights, and a maker at heart, he was an endearing one of a kind. He spent his professional career at the University of Boulder in Colorado, where he established the Craft...

Purpose This research aims to explore how textual literacy and computational literacy can support each other and combine to create literacies with new critical possibilities. It describes the development of a Web application for interactive storytelling and analyzes how its use in a high-school classroom supported new rhetorical techniques and crit...

This paper examines tensions present in school-based makerspaces. We argue that, as maker education grows, particular attention needs to be paid to social interactions and discourses, in addition to space design, equipment, and curricula. We report the results of observations and interviews conducted in a recently adopted maker program in Californi...

Computer science is poised to become a core discipline in K12 education, however there are unresolved tensions between the definitions and purposes of computer science and public education. This study's goal is to explore how logistical and conceptual challenges emerge while designing a comprehensive K12 computer science program in a public school...

The Cambridge Handbook of Computing Education Research - edited by Sally A. Fincher February 2019

Cambridge Core - Education, History, Theory - The Cambridge Handbook of Computing Education Research - edited by Sally A. Fincher

This is a research study of design and engineering classes that use a problem-based learning (PBL) approach in digital fabrication makerspaces in two middle schools. In these studies, teachers employ a PBL approach and provide an ill-structured problem scenario to facilitate design and engineering lessons in the FabLab (fabrication laboratory). Stu...

In this paper, we describe an experiment that compared the use of a Tangible User Interface (physical objects augmented with digital information) and a set of Contrasting Cases as a preparation for future learning. We carried out an experiment (N = 40) with a 2 × 2 design: the first factor compared traditional instruction (“Tell & Practice”) with a...

Transitioning students from arithmetic to algebraic thinking is a primary challenge in mathematics education. Visual patterns and physical manipulatives can be helpful, but students often struggle to see the connections between different representations. Manipul8 combines visual patterns with physical manipulatives and provides digital scaffolding...

As the importance of computational devices grows in today's technology-driven society, tools for teaching computational literacy are becoming more necessary. While microcontrollers have been shown to be an effective way to develop computational literacy in young learners, microcontrollers' accessibility is limited due to their cost. We present domi...

Learning to program is difficult for most children. Most of the interfaces designed to help children experience and understand programming are based on imperative programming. However, early exposure to functional programming have been found to have many benefits over imperative programming. We describe a tangible interface, Testudinata, that helps...

Research suggests that children with better social-emotional skills have greater academic success; but most schools still do not have a set social-emotional learning (SEL) curriculum. 'Inside Out' is a three-part online tool for middle school classrooms that makes social-emotional learning accessible and supports teachers to track emotions and faci...

Manipulative environments play a fundamental role in inquiry-based science learning, yet how they impact learning is not fully understood. In a series of two studies, we develop the argument that manipulative environments (MEs) influence the kind of inquiry behaviors students engage in, and that this influence realizes through the affordances of ME...

Edith Ackermann was one of the most important scholars in the interdisciplinary field of Child-Computer Interaction. Trained as a developmental psychologist and having worked with Jean Piaget in Switzerland, Ackermann went to MIT in 1985 to join an intrepid group of researchers led by Seymour Papert who were trying to understand how extant theories...

The Bifocal Modelling Framework (BMF) is an approach for science learning which links students’ physical experimentation with computer modelling in real time, focusing on the comparison of the two media. In this paper, we explore how a Bifocal Modelling implementation supported learning outcomes related to both content and metamodeling knowledge, f...

How might we empower anyone to create anything? Designers may dream of whimsical ideas, and then turn these ideas into physical prototypes. Armed with duct-tape, cardboard and illusion, “Wizard of Oz” prototypes may communicate the essence of an idea using only raw materials found in every household. However, for electronic prototyping, the tools n...

This paper presents three multimodal learning analytic approaches from a hands-on learning activity. We use video, audio, gesture and bio-physiology data from a two-condition study (N = 20), to identify correlations between the multimodal data, experimental condition, and two learning outcomes: design quality and learning. The three approaches inco...

This study focuses on the two main design approaches applied to the guidance of student product development during capstone design courses through a comparison of two major approaches: traditional design process (TDP) and design thinking (DT). The objective of this paper is to discuss the impact of these design approaches on student activities, out...

The Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) and other national frameworks are calling for much more sophisticated approaches to STEM education, centered around the integration of complex experimentation (including real labs, not just simulations), data collection and analysis, modeling, and data-driven argumentation, i.e., students can behave like...

Understanding the relationship between human behavior and environmental impact is an important challenge for young learners. Children can benefit from learning experiences that enable them to actively consider and negotiate the complex tradeoffs that inform global issues. To address this challenge, we propose Cool Cities: a tangible user interface...

Haptic force feedback systems are unique in their ability to dynamically render physical representations. Although haptic devices have shown promise for supporting learning, prior work mainly describes results of haptic-supported learning without identifying underlying learning mechanisms. To this end, we designed a haptic-supported learning enviro...

We propose structural parallels between textual literacy and computational literacy, and explore interactive fiction as a medium at their intersection. We designed and built a web application allowing students to read and write interactive fiction and a curriculum weaving the two literacies together. A study evaluating the curriculum found modest a...

High school students often struggle to find the motivation to learn to program. Music can be a powerful motivator for these students, but existing tools that combine music production with programming often fail to meaningfully engage students with core computer science concepts. Sonification Blocks was created to shift the focus back toward big ide...

Amid today's explosion of cheap and abundant tools for Physical Computing, there is a serious neglect of design for learnability. This issue is especially important when Physical Computing is not used mainly to teach engineering skills but to foster creativity and innovation. This empirical study presents a design case study that took place while w...

Sociocultural theories of learning regard oral storytelling as a fundamental step towards literacy development. Collaborative play can lead to richer and sustained stories among children of young age. We describe an interactive learning environment called The Conference of the Birds (CoB). By allowing two users to interact with the interface at the...

The Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) and other national frameworks are calling for much more sophisticated approaches to STEM education, centered around the integration of complex experimentation (including real labs, not just simulations), data collection and analysis, modeling, and data-driven argumentation, i.e., students can behave like...

National guidelines advocate for a more sophisticated STEM education that integrates complex and authentic scientific practices, e.g., experimentation, data collection, data analysis, and modeling. How to achieve that is currently unclear for both presential and distance education. We recently developed a scalable cloud lab that enables many online...

Technology is changing the way students interact with knowledge, and open-ended activities are one of the main types of tasks that students engage with in technology-rich environments. However, the amount of guidance needed to promote learning in these environments remains unknown. We explore this issue by focusing on the effects of step-by-step ve...

‘‘Making’’ represents an increasingly popular label for describing a form of engineering design. While making is growing in popularity, there are still open questions about the strategies that students are using in these activities. Assessing and improving learning in making/ engineering design contexts require that we have a better understanding o...

Background: As the maker movement is increasingly adopted into K-12 schools, students are developing new competences in exploration and fabrication technologies. This study assesses learning with these technologies in K-12 makerspaces and FabLabs. Purpose: Our study describes the iterative process of developing an assessment instrument for this new...

The maker movement in education has been a revolution in waiting for a century. It rests on conceptual and technological pillars that have been engendered in schools and research labs for decades, such as project-based learning, constructivism, and technological tools for “making things,” such as physical computing kits, programming languages for n...