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Tomorrow's lessons today
Stanford students display cutting-edge education products

by Alexandria Rocha

What do a video game about bird flu, a cell phone that encourages philosophical thinking, and a BlackBerry-like device that helps teachers get organized have in common?

For starters, they are all proof that the world of designing education products has grown far beyond the flash card.

The video game Outbreak, the mobile thinking tool PEEK/RE:search, and the handheld gadget for teachers SamePage are just three of the latest product developments out of the Stanford University School of Education's Learning, Design and Technology program.

Last week, the program's 17 students showcased their 13 projects in the annual Master's Project Exposition. Wallenberg Hall, located off the university's main quad, was filled with interactive displays and students excitedly pitching their concepts and projects to passersby.

The projects ranged from tangible products to concepts in motion, from Piya Sorcar's online HIV/AIDS education curriculum for young adults in India to James Scarborough's plan to bring technically-challenged people into virtual reality spaces like Second Life and World of Warcraft.

Students in the one-year Learning, Design and Technology masters program are taught to design and evaluate learning environments, products and programs. They have an opportunity to design a technology-based solution to a learning problem they find compelling, according to program director Shelley Goldman.

Students spend 200 to 300 hours on their projects.

While the products and environments students create vary widely, there is a trend among the technologies students use as platforms for their inventions. In the first few years of the program, which began in 1997, Goldman said most projects were Web based. Now, students are creating mobile devices and virtual spaces.

"When new technology comes in, students are trying to see how they can use it," Goldman said.

Hal Larsson and Sam Ogami wanted to help teachers become more organized and structure their lesson plans better. Ogami said he was tired of sitting in classes and seeing the lesson structure "rapidly degrade," as discussions ran over or a guest speaker talked too long.

Larsson and Ogami designed a handheld device, which looks a lot like a BlackBerry, that teachers could input their original lesson plans into or select from predefined ones. The idea is that a teacher would carry the small device during class and alter their lesson plan as they go. They can later look at both the original lesson plan and the altered plan to see what worked and what didn't.

"With this, you're not sitting down at the end of the day, saying, 'What happened?'" Larsson said.

Sun-Young Chun, Dahwun Kim and David Tu also designed a mobile, or wireless, device. The trio created the Smart Shopping Pal, an electronic tool about the size of an Etch A Sketch that incorporates learning activities for children while in the grocery store.

"We had the thought that supermarkets can be an excursion not only for adults but for kids, too," said Chun, who grew up in Korea. "There are lots of words in super markets, and lots of language learning opportunities for children."

The Pal is wireless, and would remain connected to shopping carts. Children would be able to scan various items into the Pal, which would then play a series of spelling and letter and shape recognition games with the child.

The team's prototype was created with preschool-aged children in mind, but Chun said it could be expanded into educational opportunities for teenagers and even adults.

Some of the students' projects were less concrete, but were supported by strong theories and game plans. Adam Royalty, for example, plans to develop a curriculum called Standing Up to Statistics targeted toward middle school students that would help them "analyze statistics by separating the numbers from the arguments."

Many visitors to last week's expo were drawn to Scott Doorley and Maryanna Rogers' project called PEEK/RE:search. With a companion Web site already launched at www.projectpeek.com, PEEK/RE:search is a mobile tool based on Doorley and Rogers' concept of "informal learning."

Users can use PEEK/RE:search on their cell phones as a discussion forum for "personal hypotheses, common assumptions and empirically supported research." For example, one user posted: "Plants make people happy." Another asked: "Do Americans trust each other?"

The idea, said Doorley, is to encourage people to simply think and contemplate the posed issues. And pose their own.

"The environment is really rich with knowledge, but people don't necessarily have the opportunities to access it," he said. "If you have downtime, you can download questions, propose hypotheses. We want to facilitate this type of thinking. It's really lightweight. There's not a lot of commitment."

A project on the heavier side is Angel Inokon's Outbreak video game, which challenges adult users to manage a bird flu pandemic. The game is broken down into 20 minute segments that each pose a different challenge to the player.

In one segment, for example, the player is called on by President George W. Bush to make decisions about the country's travel policy. In another, the player is a father who has to gather food and other materials in a grocery store.

The game raises "awareness of what it's like to be in a panic environment," Inokon said.

Inokon's product can be found at www.outbreakthegame.com. For more information on the Learning, Design and Technology program at Stanford, visit ldt.stanford.edu.

Staff Writer Alexandria Rocha can be e-mailed at arocha@paweekly.com.