Think It, Test It, Build It: A Real World, Student/Teacher Lab to Accelerate Technology Utilization

Posted by Melissa Withers on February 2, 2010

BIF seeks to expand its Student Experience Lab to create an environment where students and teachers co-create, test and share strategies for leveraging technology/digital media. The lab will improve understanding of how students use technology and demonstrate digital platforms that enhance student/teacher engagement and support personalized learning.

We have applied for a HASTAC Digital Media and Learning Grant to support this effort. The granting agency runs a public commenting period--happening now--and it would help our cause if Lab supporters visit the grant website and post a comment in support of our proposal.  It will take no more than 5 minutes and you can do it here: http://dmlcompetition.net/pligg/story.php?title=552

More about the Grant:
Technology permeates almost every aspect of life and we must find better ways to integrate it into student learning experiences. Real-world insight into how students and teachers utilize technology is thin and channels for sharing effective practices are few. BIF seeks to expand its Student Experience Lab to create an environment where students and teachers co-create and test strategies for leveraging digital media and technology, advance understanding of how students and teachers use technology, and demonstrate actionable ways that technology/digital media can enhance student/teacher engagement and support personalized learning.

The Lab will offer an invaluable resource to students, teachers and organizations that need help integrating digital technologies into everyday practice, as well as create a new channel for aggressively communicating about effective strategies.

Building on the Lab’s infrastructure and methodology, BIF will activate student and teacher participants from diverse backgrounds to map technology use behaviors and enable student and teachers to collaboratively design/test technology integration solutions that support student-centered learning.

Investigations into technology utilization must be ongoing—technology is evolving so quickly that best practices of today may be outdated tomorrow.  The Lab will support on-going R&D to understand and influence how digital technologies change the way students of all ages learn, play, socialize, and participate in civic life.

Lab activities (methodology, ideation, experimental protocol, outcomes) will be distributed through BIF’s in-house, digital production capabilities and Innovation Story Studio, a nationally recognized on-line library of innovation stories.

Visit the Lab here: http://www.businessinnovationfactory.com/projects/sxl