THE CAVES Project - Collaborative Analysis Versioning Environment System; THE CODESH Project - Collaborative Development Shell

A key feature of collaboration in science and software development is to have a {\em log} of what and how is being done - for private use and reuse and for sharing selected parts with collaborators, which most often today are distributed geographically on an ever larger scale. Even better if this log is {\em automatic}, created on the fly while a scientist or software developer is working in a habitual way, without the need for extra efforts. The {\tt CAVES} and {\tt CODESH} projects address this problem in a novel way, building on the concepts of {\em virtual state} and {\em virtual transition} to provide an automatic persistent logbook for sessions of data analysis or software development in a collaborating group. A repository of sessions can be configured dynamically to record and make available the knowledge accumulated in the course of a scientific or software endeavor. Access can be controlled to define logbooks of private sessions and sessions shared within or between collaborating groups.Comment: 4 pages, presented at the Meeting of the Division of Particles and Fields of the APS, Riverside, USA, August 200

Learning by volunteer computing, thinking and gaming: What and how are volunteers learning by participating in Virtual Citizen Science?

Citizen Science (CS) refers to a form of research collaboration that engages volunteers without formal scientific training in contributing to empirical scientific projects. Virtual Citizen Science (VCS) projects engage participants in online tasks. VCS has demonstrated its usefulness for research, however little is known about its learning potential for volunteers. This paper reports on research exploring the learning outcomes and processes in VCS. In order to identify different kinds of learning, 32 exploratory interviews of volunteers were conducted in three different VCS projects. We found six main learning outcomes related to different participants' activities in the project. Volunteers learn on four dimensions that are directly related to the scope of the VCS project: they learn at the task/game level, acquire pattern recognition skills, on-topic content knowledge, and improve their scientific literacy. Thanks to indirect opportunities of VCS projects, volunteers learn on two additional dimensions: off topic knowledge and skills, and personal development. Activities through which volunteers learn can be categorized in two levels: at a micro (task/game) level that is direct participation to the task, and at a macro level, i.e. use of project documentation, personal research on the Internet, and practicing specific roles in project communities. Both types are influenced by interactions with others in chat or forums. Most learning happens to be informal, unstructured and social. Volunteers do not only learn from others by interacting with scientists and their peers, but also by working for others: they gain knowledge, new status and skills by acting as active participants, moderators, editors, translators, community managers, etc. in a project community. This research highlights these informal and social aspects in adult learning and science education and also stresses the importance for learning through the indirect opportunities provided by the project: the main one being the opportunity to participate and progress in a project community, according to one's tastes and skills

Status Report of the DPHEP Study Group: Towards a Global Effort for Sustainable Data Preservation in High Energy Physics

Data from high-energy physics (HEP) experiments are collected with significant financial and human effort and are mostly unique. An inter-experimental study group on HEP data preservation and long-term analysis was convened as a panel of the International Committee for Future Accelerators (ICFA). The group was formed by large collider-based experiments and investigated the technical and organisational aspects of HEP data preservation. An intermediate report was released in November 2009 addressing the general issues of data preservation in HEP. This paper includes and extends the intermediate report. It provides an analysis of the research case for data preservation and a detailed description of the various projects at experiment, laboratory and international levels. In addition, the paper provides a concrete proposal for an international organisation in charge of the data management and policies in high-energy physics

Assessing the Value of a Mobile Application in Fostering Ideation within a School Context

The purpose of this paper is to explore the usefulness of the mobile application NeedIT in fostering ideation and idea generation in a school context. After having been used and tested in three public schools a research was undertaken in an elementary school in order to examine the application usability from instructor and student perspectives. In order to gain an insight into the context of using the mobile application in teaching and learning, the authors examined current literature and collected data through observations, semi-structured interviews, and by observing the NeedIT underlying database. The study attempted to answer the following questions: How can mobile technology be used to support students’ ideation? What obstacles are there in developing students’ ideation within this context? How can the methods be further developed or refined? 4) What are the benefits of using mobile technology for ideation in schools? The study also highlighted the importance of teaching students to differentiate between problem-needs to be independently identified by students within their home or community environment and possible solutions to be developed and evaluated in collaboration with the classroom teacher. The application has proved to be valuable for its intended use; however it needs to be further developed so that it may also be used as a medium in establishing course content based on students’homework assignments passed electronically to school. The perceived overall value of mobile technology in schools lies partly in the multifaceted capabilities associated with this modern technology and novel attempts have been made to employ its use in many different educational settings.Publisher's prin