Promoting Mediated Collaborative Inquiry in Primary and Secondary Science Settings

Mediated collaborative inquiry within communities of practice is proposed as a critical educational goal for the 21st century. Mediated collaborative inquiry promotes the process of participation in search of understanding via mobile, wireless devices and social software. Communities of practice provide sociotechnical scaffolding to define and legitimate inquiry. In this chapter we present a collaborative, collective perspective of learning and practice to demonstrate how we design to support communities of practice for scientific inquiry. The first project, the Mobile Malawi Project, was an exploratory proof-of-concept attempt to facilitate learning and communication among geographically and socially distributed participants in Malawi, Africa using mobile smart phones and social software. The second project, Kids for Change, is a rigorous design-based research project building from the former that encourages middle school students in after school settings to use 3D digital modeling software (Google SketchUp) in socially relevant and civically engaging activities. Both endeavors are designed to provide primary and secondary students opportunities to learn and apply important scientific processes andmathematical ideas to real world situations while interacting with key constituents, including teachers, parents, teacher educators, and community experts. The authors conclude by noting cautions toward an approach of promoting collaboration and community with ICTs. Traditional institutions, pedagogies, and ways of knowing might preclude or hamper smooth transitions to a participatory, network-based educational system built on a Web 2.0 infrastructure and services.