Minutes of meeting 12.19.2000

Present: Dave Haas, Tom Moher (Janet Kim has wisdom tooth!)

Discussion focused on plans for fourth grade.

  1. We discussed the analysis of the Extrapolation activity:
    1. There are five sources of data: Victor's comments, Marlynne's comments, our observations, path trace data, and post-tests.
    2. Dave will retrieve post-tests from Victor this week and scan them. He'll give them to Tom, who will post them on this web site. Dave will remove subject identifications from the post-tests, and assign subject numbers, which we will align with treatment groups (e.g., static map, you are here map, and tracing map.)
    3. Dave will arrange meeting with Victor during week of January 1 to get his comments. Tom will arrange meeting with Marlynne for her comments. Tom will scan collected data from explorations and post on this page.
  2. We discussed plans for the Bee Dance project
    1. We discussed the issue of "ownership" of the Bee project. In our last meeting with Dave and Janet, I mentioned that we needed to decide whether this would be the basis of Dave's project, with the understanding that Janet, as well and Melissa and Tim, would have the opportunity to be involved in the remainder of the design, empirical studies, and publications. Tom's understanding at this point is that this will indeed by Dave's thesis project.
    2. Dave needs to make progress on three separate tracks: (1) establishing the intellectual background for the work (i.e., gesture languages, science inquiry, etc.), (2) establishing a plan for an empirical study (we talked about the difference between design research, which would require two "cycles" of the application, with improvements between, vs. experimental research, which would require a manipulation, such as technology changes, etc.), and (3) getting the tech done and solid. Dave will report to Tom in mid-January on his progress on all three fronts.
    3. Dave will arrange a meeting during the week of January 1, 2001, with Janet (and, if possible, Melissa and Tim), to review the status of the tech. (Critical demo).
  3. Tom reinforced the idea that we want to establish a goal of publishing both of these studies.
  4. Tom noted that we need to get the Bee activity done by the middle of March. The VR room goes away near the end of March for asbestos abatement.

 

Reporter: Tom