Abstract:
Project Wildlife under a plastic garbage island
In this talk, Ole Caprani will present a research project with 3rd grade students in the Danish school subject called Nature/technology. The project has a framing story which runs like this: “A research group lead by professor P. Frost is studying the wildlife under one of the plastic garbage islands in the Pacific Ocean. P. Frost sends messages to third grade students at the Danish school Mårslet. The messages describes the situation for the animals under the island. The messages also describe challenges e.g., that animals and ships get caught by the patch of plastic out there.
After the first message, the children construct a “scale” model of a plastic island with the kinds of animals that the children imagine are living there. The construction material is plastic garbage that the children have brought to school. In one of the later messages the children are asked to build and program a warning system to prevent animals and ships from getting caught in the patch of plastic. The technology construction kit LEGO We Do is used in the construction of the warning systems.
As an activity in Nature/technology combines 1) a Nature part: the theme of wildlife under a plastic island with 2) a technology part: the work on designing solutions to a series of challenges from P. Frost.
The planning of the activity has been inspired by the Four P’s (projects, passion, peers and play) of Resnick & Rusk (2020), Coding at a Crossroads, and Computational Participation of Kafai (2016, From Computational Thinking to Computational Participation in K-12 Education.
A description of the activity “Livet under skraldeøen” (in Danish) can be found at kortlink.dk/2d7q3.
Bio
Ole Caprani is an Associate Professor at The Institute of Computer Science at the University of Aarhus. He is originally a mathematician from Copenhagen University, 1974. During the last 25 years he has been working with robotics and other technologies for children and youth of all ages from Kindergarten to universities.