What Do We Know About Ubiquitous Computing?

Representations

We use the term "representations" to refer to the many ways human beings externally describe and explore what they know. Ubiquitous access to digital technologies expands our representational repertoires.
In The Educators Manifesto (http://www.ilt.columbia.edu/publications/manifesto/contents.html), Robbie McClintock identifies three areas in which technological innovations have already changed what is pedagogically possible. The first of these involves the Internet and broadband communications networks. he maintains that new communications technologies have the potential to change schools and classrooms from isolated places with relatively scarce access to information to ones with rich connections to the world and all its ideas. The second area in which digital innovations are changing what is educationally possible involves multimedia and multiple representations of knowledge. Multimedia, McClintock arguess, "make it increasingly evident that the work of thinking can take place through many forms - verbal, visual, auditory, kinetic, and blends of all and each." (13). Thirdly, McClintock points to digital tools designed to "augment human intelligence" (Englebart, http://sloan.stanford.edu/mousesite/1968Demo.html); tools ranging, for example, from digital calculators, word processors, databases and spreadsheets to very complex modeling, statistical, and graphical software.
Taken together, these digital affordances make it possible for teachers and students to access, explore, create, and share ideas in a much greater variety of formats and far more integrated ways than ever before possible.
Across implementations, for example, researchers have found much greater use of Internet resources:
Hill, Reeves, Grant, Wang & Han, 2002	http://lpsl.coe.uga.edu/Projects/aalaptop/pdf/aa3rd/Year3ReportFinalVersion.pdf
Honey & Henriquez, 2000	http://www.aypf.org/publications/compendium/comp01.pdf
Zucker & McGhee, 2005	http://ubiqcomputing.org/Apple_1-to-1_Research.pdf
They have found significantly more presentations communicating findings:
Hill, Reeves, Grant, Wang & Han, 2002	http://lpsl.coe.uga.edu/Projects/aalaptop/pdf/aa3rd/Year3ReportFinalVersion.pdf
Honey & Henriquez, 2000	http://www.aypf.org/publications/compendium/comp01.pdf
And they have found a much greater variety of representations being used to explore, create and communicate knowledge, including the use of a much wider variety of visual representations, spreadsheets and databases, simulations, and exploratory environment:
Apple Computer, 1995	http://images.apple.com/education/k12/leadership/acot/pdf/10yr.pdf
Bartels & Bartels, 2002	http://www.learningwithlaptops.org/files/3rd%20Year%20Laptop%20Prog.pdf
Danesh, Inkpen, Lau, Shu & Booth, 2001	http://delivery.acm.org/10.1145/370000/365303/p388-danesh.pdf?key1=365303&key2=4576722411&coll=GUIDE&dl=ACM&CFID=71251875&CFTOKEN=33001180
Hill, Reeves, Grant, Wang & Han, 2002	http://lpsl.coe.uga.edu/Projects/aalaptop/pdf/aa3rd/Year3ReportFinalVersion.pdf
Honey & Henriquez, 2000	http://www.aypf.org/publications/compendium/comp01.pdf
Roschelle, Penuel & Abrahamson, 2004	http://ctl.sri.com/publications/displayPublication.jsp?ID=321
Findings concerning the effects of ubiquitous computing on the representations of knowledge employed in classroom activities in RCET's AT&T Classroom are similar. We found that teachers and students with ready access to digital technologies employed a much greater variety of representations, especially visual representations to create and communicate knowledge (Swan, Kratcoski, Lin, Schenker, & van 't Hooft, 2006b)

	For example, in our ubiquitous computing classroom, kindergarten students used digital photography, tessellation software, the Logo robotic turtle, and a music composition program to study the mathematics of patterns and demonstrate their understanding of the topic.
	Sixth graders researched their own family histories using audio recorders, digital cameras, and handheld computers to collect stories, pictures, genealogies, and recipes. They used concept mapping software to trace family trees and design family crests, and a desktop publishing application to organize and share their unique accounts in professionally bound books.
	One fourth grade class used time-lapse photography to document a carnation's absorption of colored water. They also used the BugScope Electron Microscope to virtually view plant samples they prepared for an experiment on the effects of water quality on the plant cells that absorbed it.
	Another class of fourth graders monitored water quality by using digital probes to measure the temperature, turbidity, and Ph levels of local streams. Students used a spreadsheet application to analyze data and relate their findings to the kinds and quantities of animals they discovered in the water.
What is common across these examples is that they are centered on multiple, memorable representations created by students to make sense of authentic experiences.
In addition, teacher and student interviews suggest ways in which such ready access to multiple representations of knowledge enhance student learning. In particular, they lend support to McClintock's notions that by facilitating much greater access to a greater variety of knowledge, broadening the acceptable forms of knowledge representation, and providing tools that automate lower level intellectual skills, digital technologies support wider and more inclusive participation in intellectual endeavors. Indeed, in an important sense, it is the easy access to multiple representational forms for accessing, manipulating, creating and sharing knowledge made possible by ubiquitous computing that support changing conceptualizations and uses of knowledge in ubiquitous computing classrooms.
For an annotated bibliography of research on ubiquitous computing see: http://www.ubiqcomputing.org/Reference.pdf

Last updated on 05/12/2006