Projects
The Concord Consortium undertakes innovative projects that bridge the gap between research and practice. Some projects are at the level of nuts-and-bolts technology, while others focus on learners. In all cases our projects strive to create new structures for learning and are strategically placed to achieve important long-term goals.
Current Projects
CAPA Project 
1 resource
In May, we started on an exciting three-year project to demonstrate the feasibility and cost-effectiveness of computer-assisted performance assessment for evaluating students’ knowledge and abilities in advanced technological education. With the support of the Advanced Technological Education Program of the National Science Foundation, we are developing the first of a series of performance assessments of students’ understanding of key topics in introductory electronics.
ITSI Project
This comprehensive information technologies (IT) project for middle and high school teachers prepares diverse students for careers in IT by engaging them in exciting, inquiry-based science projects that use computational models and real-time data acquisition. The project provides over 126 hours of lab-based, credit-bearing activities for 90 teachers and full support for classroom implementation.
Participants will learn basic electronics and design skills that will enable their students to install, configure, and use a wide range of sensors. They will also learn to teach students to use, modify, and create computational models. The skills students will learn will greatly enhance their ability to undertake investigations while giving a solid foundation for IT-based careers in programming, computer hardware, and software engineering.
LOOPS Project
LOOPS will collect data on student progress — what activity each student is working on or has completed, plus student responses to questions and scores on various explicit assessments. The major innovation of LOOPS will be data on student inquiry skills obtained by monitoring how students learn from their explorations of models and probes. LOOPS will extract in real time a few key indicators of inquiry skills and present them in a format that teachers can use.
Molecular Rover Project 2 resources
We are developing and applying new educational technology tools for student exploration of complex molecular structures. The software will recognize forces and allow students to navigate around and through molecules. With virtual probes, students will be able to assess the forces among molecules that shape structures such as DNA, proteins, ionic lattices, or cell membranes, thus providing a profound introduction to nano- and bio-technology. This approach could drive substantial improvements in science courses at both high school and college levels.
Rhode Island ITEST Project
The goal of RI-ITEST is to prepare diverse students for careers in information technologies by engaging them in exciting, inquiry-based learning activities that use sophisticated computational models in support of a revolutionary science curriculum.
Teachers will incorporate interactive computer models developed under the Science of Atoms and Molecules (SAM) project at the Concord Consortium. These materials were specifically designed to support a deeper understanding of science made possible through interactive computer simulations and the new physics-chemistry-biology sequence. Connections will be made between the models students use to learn science and possible careers in research and industry where computer modeling is used.
Science of Atoms and Molecules Project
Because the atoms and molecules are central to much of physics, chemistry, and biology, they provide unifying, but currently missing, content for these subjects. The new “Science of Atoms and Molecules: Enabling the New Secondary Science Curriculum” project, funded by NSF, will develop four strands of materials that unify the secondary curriculum by focusing on atoms, molecules, and their interactions.
The project will provide materials and professional development resources that allow high schools to implement a successful sequence of physics, chemistry, and biology as a unified and consistent progression. Curriculum materials will provide a progressive understanding of the importance of atomic scale phenomena from fundamental atoms to complex biology. This approach is designed to guarantee better pedagogy, deeper learning, and longer retention.
TELS Project 1 resource
In the Fall of 2003, the Concord Consortium co-founded of the Technology Enhanced Learning in Science (TELS) Center, a Teaching and Learning Center funded by the National Science Foundation. By providing major funding for an Education Accelerator, TELS supports applied research on the educational impacts on science of information and computer technologies.
Modeled on the large research institutions that do "big science," the Education Accelerator plans to do "big education" - projects requiring collaboration and resources beyond the scope of most educational research. The portal and modeling software developed as part of the MAC Project at the The Concord Consortium is one example of the technology that will allow the Accelerator to undertake large studies using students anywhere.
TELS is a collaboration that includes The Concord Consortium, seven colleges and universities, and seven school districts. The lead institution is the University of California, Berkeley, where Marcia Linn serves as Principal Investigator.
UDL Science Project
The goal of this project is to use UDL principles to create practical science materials for students and teachers in inclusive classrooms. The project will create inquiry modules around the theme of energy. They will address questions such as “Why are there clouds?” and “What do plants eat?” Probes will support lab investigations and computational models will allow students to explore virtual environments.
Past Projects
Beacon International Neighborhood
Beacon International Neighborhood was a web-based curriculum project that linked grade school students in the study of sustainable development and the creation of a virtual learning neighborhood.
BioLogica™
BioLogica™ is a computer-based model that enables students to manipulate biological processes at different but dynamically related levels of life function.
Building Bridges for Sustainability Education
The Center for Sustainable Futures (CSF) is working with educators in Central Europe to integrate sustainability education into the curriculum.
CAESL
The Concord Consortium is one of several collaborators on the NSF's Center for Assessment and Evaluation of Student Learning (CAESL). We are developing technology tools for student assessment that will be used in this research project.
Calipers Project
Calipers is a joint project between The Concord Consortium, Inc. and SRI International. It is funded by the National Science Foundation Instructional Materials Development section. The project is developing materials that use simulations to assess complex science learning.
CAPTIC Project
CAPTIC is a strategic alliance between the Minister of Education’s Huascaran Project in Peru and USAID’s dot-EDU project directed by the Education Development Center, Inc. and the Concord Consortium. This alliance strives to improve the quality of rural Peruvian education by introducing project-based learning, with the support of information and communication technologies. These projects are student-centered and foster learning through exploration and collaboration between students and teachers.
Twelve primary schools and four teacher training colleges from three regions in Peru; Junin, Pasco, and Ucayali, are participating in this project, with an average of four teachers participating from each institution. All institutions are part of the Huascaran project and will develop relevant face-to-face teacher training activities and face-to-face online collaborative projects with their students
CC Atoms Project
This project builds on the Molecular Workbench software, adding models of chemical reactions and biological processes used in core science courses and technical specialty courses in two year colleges. Activities were developed using the Concord Modeling Workbench software, the scripting language Pedagogica, and WISE (the Web-based Inquiry Science Environment developed at the University of California, Berkeley).
CILT
The Center for Innovative Learning Technologies (CILT) was founded in October 1997 with a grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to stimulate the development and study of important, technology-enabled solutions to critical problems in K-14 science, mathematics, engineering, and technology (SMET) learning. Four \"theme teams\" focused the efforts in areas of highest promise. CILT events, often workshops organized by theme, provided a collaborative forum in which people in the learning science community met to assess the progress of the field, define research agendas, and initiate new collaborations. Many of these collaborations form seed grants funded by CILT. In addition to these successful CILT programs, CILT has generated many resources for the learning science community, including tools, publications, and NetCourses.
CONGENIA Project
The CONGENIA project, implemented in Colombia, uses information and communication technologies and collaborative pedagogy to enhance the quality of teacher training and student education in rural areas of the country. CONGENIA is a Spanish acronym that highlights the core pedagogy: authentic classroom conversations. These conversations—blended to include both face-to-face and Internet discussions—help to build communities of learners among students and communities of practice among teachers.
Data and Models
Can the integration of hands-on experimentation combined with visualizations based on physical data with those created by models support deeper understanding by middle school students of the difficult concepts of heat and temperature? Can we extend the student experience and learning from conductivity and thermal gradients in different materials further to include radiation, convection, and small and large-scale atmospheric physics?
Those were the questions this NSF-funded research project worked to answer.
Education for a Sustainable Future Project 3 resources
Sustainable development involves complex, interdisciplinary issues that would be impossible to bring to precollege education without technology. Technology-based tools that assist planning, modeling, communicating, collaborating, and decision-making are essential for studying sustainable development, for participating in sustainable development activities, and for entering related vocations. Technology is also essential to the conduct of this project, providing the collaboration tools to bring international expertise to the schools, to support teachers as they develop and implement the materials, and to disseminate the resulting materials. Using an educational strategy based on student inquiry, we will use a mix of existing general purpose software tools and three exciting new tools developed specifically to help students visualize and explore possible futures. Inquiry-based sustainable development materials in six topic areas will be developed and piloted in nine Georgia schools K-12 serving low-wealth communities. After careful, independent evaluation, the project will be expanded across eight districts in the South and then disseminated nationwide. The result will be the wide availability of excellent, technologically based materials for learning through inquiry about sustainable development.
Exploratorium
We worked with San Francisco's Museum of Science, Art, and Human Perception to develop an Electronic GuideBook that uses networked handheld computers. The goal of this project was to enhance and extend the museum visitor's experience by providing a handheld computer that communicates with the Exploratorium's interactive exhibits over wireless networks.
GenScope
GenScope created a manipulable model of genetics that has been used successfully to teach genetics in middle school, high school, and college. BioLogica™ is an extension of Genscope.
Hands on Molecular Science
Hands on Molecular Science was a research study that supported student understanding of structure-function relationships in proteins using technologies such as the Feel It mouse, interactive software and 3D rendering technologies.
Hands On Physics
Hands On Physics is a curriculum that pioneered a project-based approach to learning physics that can be offered online to individual students.
Haze-SPAN
Haze-SPAN was an example of combining good science and good science education. Students collect and share data about haze and other indicators of air quality.
INTEC
International Netcourse Teacher Enhancement Coalition was an online professional development course that focused on using student inquiry in secondary math and science teaching.
Jason Academy Project
We are helping the Jason Academy integrate probes into their online professional development programs for science teachers.
Mobile Inquiry Technology
Mobile Inquiry Technology promoted the use of portable computers and probeware with grade school level math and science curriculum materials.
Modeling Across the Curriculum Project
This project aims to demonstrate the effective use of technology to a student-centered, model-based approach to secondary science teaching. Using a variety of computer-based manipulable models and probeware, we teach students how to create, refine, and apply mental models to improve their understanding of science.
We are evaluating their learning through embedded on-line assessments, as well as with conventional pre- and post-test instruments, and scores on standardized assessments.
The project is also identifying, investigating, and addressing the barriers to the widespread adoption and long-range sustainability of this approach.
Molecular Literacy Project
This three-year project is working to enhance science and technology teaching in grades 10-14 by providing Molecular Literacy content in support of careers in biotechnology and nanotechnology. The project is developing new materials that use highly interactive molecular dynamics and quantum mechanics models, and embed these models in learning activities that are appropriate for both core science courses and specialized courses teaching biotechnology and nanotechnology workplace competencies. In developing these materials, the Concord Consortium works with its partner, Middlesex Community College, Bedford, Massachusetts, as well as its feeder high schools, additional community colleges (including Roxbury Community College, Parkland College, and Wachusetts Community College), biotechnology and nanotechnology companies, and CORD, an educational non-profit in Texas, which will provide national dissemination.
Molecular Logic Project
The goal of the Molecular Logic project is to improve the ability of all students to understand fundamental biological phenomena in terms of the interactions of atoms and molecules. The Molecular Logic project aims to do this by enhancing biology courses with guided explorations of powerful atomic and molecular computational models. These models are embedded in an easily implemented database linked to both typical textbooks and standards.
Molecular Workbench Project
The goal of the NSF-funded Molecular Workbench has been to provide a rich environment that makes the atomic level familiar, predictable, and connected with the macroscopic world, and to understand the effect of such an environment on student learning.
MTV 1 resource
Making Thinking Visible is a large scale design study involving middle and high school students from California and Massachusetts who collaborated on-line about plate tectonic activity in their respective locations.
NetAdventure
NetAdventure offered a rich set of engaging activities in math, science, and technology over the Web.
Playspace
PlaySpace emerged from a CILT seed grant designed to elucidate the design and use of digital play spaces, and help set the direction for a new generation of multicultural playful digital learning environments
In PlaySpace we conducted a literature and product review of electronic-based playful environments for kids. These included playspaces on both desk-top computers and hand-held devices. We examined fantasy exploration environments, role-playing environments, puzzle & problem-solving environments, as well as virtual design and exibit spaces.
At the conclusion of this project we produced a report that included a review of relevant literature, lessons learned from our product review and observations of children using a variety of multi-cultiral, digital playful environments.
Seeing Math Project 3 resources
Today's students need a strong grasp of mathematics to succeed both academically and in the job market. Seeing Math™ helps teachers, schools and districts rise to the challenge. Seeing Math™'s online professional development programs use interactive software, illustrative video, guided discussion and standards-driven content to:
* Equip teachers with the knowledge and instructional strategies to engage, motivate and lead students to math success.
* Provide schools and districts a flexible and cost-effective solution to address rigorous standards, meet staff development needs and improve student achievement.
* Help new and veteran teachers gain insight into how students think about mathematics.
SLIC
Science Learning in Context explored the educational gains possible from using portable computers and probes for student explorations outside the classroom.
Sustainable Development Extension Network
The SDEN aims to create an integrated extension network that gives communities better access to information about best practices in sustainable development.
TEEMSS 2 Project 1 resource
Technology Enhanced Elementary Math and Science (TEEMSS 2) is a project, funded by the National Science Foundation (Grant No. IMD0352522), whose goal is to bring the power of information and communication technology to science education in grades 3 - 8, by creating and disseminating valuable, proven, and easily implemented technology-based science learning materials and associated teacher professional development. The project is creating instructional materials that address important science content and can be easily and inexpensively integrated into any science program. The project has selected age-appropriate, standards - based content for which technology offers real advantages. The learning strategy is based on student investigations of real phenomena using sensors and of virtual environments based on computer models.
TEEMSS Project
TEEMSS was a long-term initiative at the Concord Consortium to infuse computer-based data collection and analysis across the elementary and middle school science curriculum. The project was funded by the Elementary and Secondary Informal Education division of the National Science Foundation (Grant No. 9986419).
Virtual High School
Virtual High School is a nationwide collaboration of public and private high schools that offers 150 Internet-based courses to students in participating schools.
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This page was last updated 06/16/2005