Digital Design Literacy in K-12 Education

This dissertation addresses the introduction, sustainment and articulation of digital design literacy in K-12 education. It is the result of my four years of research in the [email protected] research and development project. Within this project, I have researched the topic through constructive design research experiments on both students’ and teachers’ experiences and competencies with digital design as new subject matter in K-12. The contributions presented in this dissertation are positioned within the emerging research field of making in education. The contributions concern new possibilities that making in education creates for K–12 students to develop competencies to design and critique digital technologies. The point of departure for my work was to explore how the implementation of maker settings and technologies might provide novel ways to combine constructionism, design and digital technology with the intention of having students develop digital design literacy. Hence, this dissertation is a response to the question of how to educate K–12 students to understand, use, critically reflect on, and design digital technologies through the emerging educational possibilities enabled by maker activities, maker settings, and maker technologies. The dissertation is comprised of five research papers and two reports framed by an overview that sum up the arguments made in the papers and the contributions from these come together as a whole. The first contribution is a conceptual understanding of digital design literacy. I lay out a genealogy of traditional literacy toward new literacies to legitimize digital design as a new literacy in K–12 education. I contribute an understanding of how design and digital literacies are interrelated, can mutually benefit one another, and be synthesized and articulated holistically as integrated digital design literacy. The second contribution are quantitative measures of the state-of-the-actual in terms of students’ digital, design, and critical literacy and an assessment tool for quantitatively evaluating students’ stance towards inquiry, which I argue to be an important competence of digital design literacy. The third contribution is an understanding of three crucial aspects which must be considered when developing teachers’ capability to teach digital design literacy. I point to impediments for such teaching and to existing practicing teachers’ limited possibilities to meet demands presented by teaching digital design literacy. I contribute a framework for educating reflective design educators who can support students in developing digital design literacy. The accumulation of these three contributions has resulted in what is the main contribution of this dissertation overview: The Digital Design Literacy Framework. The framework contributes a legitmaziation, articulation and operational definitions of digital design as a new literacy and its underlying competencies

Digital Technology and design processes II: Follow-up report on FabLab@School survey among Danish youth

This report is part of the [email protected] research program, which investigates the use of digital fabrication technologies and design activities among students aged 11-15 years in Danish schools. In order to measure the effects of the [email protected] educational program from 2014 to late 2016, this follow-up survey was administered to two groups: first, schools in which FabLab and design activities had been carried out in the [email protected] project throughout a 2-year period (FabLab schools), and second, a control group of schools that were not part of the [email protected] project (control schools). The survey reported here, is a follow-up to a similar survey conducted in the fall of 2014

Digital Technology and design processes: Report on a FabLab@School survey among Danish youth

This report contains findings from a survey on Danish adolescents aged 11-15 years conducted in the fall of 2014 among 1236 students. It is a part of the [email protected] research program, which investigates the use of digital fabrication technologies in Danish schools

Introducing a standard method for experimental determination of the solvent response in laser pump, x-ray probe time-resolved wide-angle x-ray scattering experiments on systems in solution

WOS:000323520600021International audienceIn time-resolved laser pump, X-ray probe wide-angle X-ray scattering experiments on systems in solution the structural response of the system is accompanied by a solvent response. The solvent response is caused by reorganization of the bulk solvent following the laser pump event, and in order to extract the structural information of the solute, the solvent response has to be treated. Methodologies capable of doing so include both theoretical modelling and experimental determination of the solvent response. In the work presented here, we have investigated how to obtain a reproducible solvent response-the solvent term-experimentally when applying laser pump, X-ray probe time-resolved wide-angle X-ray scattering. The solvent term describes difference scattering arising from the structural response of the solvent to changes in the hydrodynamic parameters: pressure, temperature and density. We present results based on NIR and dye mediated solvent heating, and demonstrate that the solvent response is independent of the heating method. The NIR heating is shown to be rendered unusable by higher order effects under certain experimental conditions, while the dye mediated solvent heating is demonstrated to exhibit first order behaviour with respect to the amount of energy deposited in the solution. We introduce a standardized method for recording solvent responses in laser pump, X-ray probe time-resolved X-ray wide-angle scattering experiments by using dye mediated solvent heating. Furthermore, we have generated a library of solvent terms, which can be used to describe the solvent term in any TRWAXS experiment, and made it available online

Binding of ArgTX-636 in the NMDA receptor ion channel

The N-methyl-d-aspartate receptors (NMDARs) constitute an important class of ligand-gated cation channels that are involved in the majority of excitatory neurotransmission in the human brain. Compounds that bind in the NMDAR ion channel and act as blockers, are use-and voltage-dependent inhibitors of NMDAR activity and have therapeutic potential for treatment of a variety of brain diseases or as pharmacological tools for studies of the neurobiological role of NMDARs. We have performed a kinetic analysis of the blocking mechanism of the prototypical polyamine toxin NMDAR ion channel blocker argiotoxin-636 (ArgTX-636) at recombinant GluN1/2A receptors to provide detailed information on the mechanism of block. The predicted binding site of ArgTX-636 is in the pore region of the NMDAR ion channel formed by residues in the transmembrane M3 and the M2 pore-loop segments of the GluN1 and GluN2A subunits. To assess the predicted binding mode in further detail, we performed an alanine- and glycine-scanning mutational analysis of this pore-loop segment to systematically probe the role of pore-lining M2 residues in GluN1 and GluN2A in the channel block by ArgTX-636. Comparison of M2 positions in GluN1 and GluN2A where mutation influences ArgTX-636 potency suggests differential contribution of the M2-loops of GluN1 and GluN2A to binding of ArgTX-636. The results of the mutational analysis are highly relevant for the future structure-based development of argiotoxin-derived NMDAR channel blockers

Drone Swarms to Support Search and Rescue Operations:Opportunities and Challenges

Emergency services organizations are committed to the challenging task of saving people in distress and minimizing harm across a wide range of events, including accidents, natural disasters, and search and rescue. The teams responsible for these operations use advanced equipment to support their missions. Given the risks and the time pressure of these missions, however, adopting new technologies requires careful testing and preparation. Drones have become a valuable technology in recent years for emergency services teams employed to locate people across vast and difficult to traverse terrains. These unmanned aerial vehicles are faster and cheaper to deploy than traditional crewed aircraft. While an individual drone can be helpful to personnel by quickly offering a bird’s eye view, future scenarios may allow multiple drones working together as a swarm to reduce the time required to locate a person. Given these potentially high payoffs, we explored the challenges and opportunities of drone swarms in search and rescue operations. We conducted interviews as well as initial user studies with relevant stakeholders to understand the challenges and opportunities for drone swarms in the context of search and rescue. Through this, we gained insights to inform the development of prototypes for drone swarm control interfaces, including both technical and human interaction concerns. While drone swarms can likely benefit search and rescue operations, the significant shift from single drones to swarms may necessitate reimagining how rescue missions are conducted. We distill our findings into five key research challenges: visualization, situational awareness, technical issues, team culture, and public perception. We discuss initial steps to investigate these further.</p