Research

In this presentation, we consider how in an ongoing 18-month critical ethnography of a literacy-and-songwriting class the spur toward change enacted as youth’s multiliteracy practices galvanizes collective action emphasizing considerations of reciprocity as relational (Fisher, 2007).

Songs can be effective in engaging children with science. Tweens (children aged 8 to 12) are in an important preadolescent phase where individual interests are thought to be established. This study aims to determine if songs can help teachers to engage their tween-aged students with science. A review of the songs currently available to help teachers in Australia engage tweens with science was conducted. Few songs were found that were directed at tweens and most were aimed at content knowledge rather than engagement.

The video poster will be a brief outline of a project funded by the Stephen Hawking Foundation to create five music videos about high school physics. Research was done prior to their creation to inform the best approach to the song writing, video production, and accompanying resources and evaluation was conducted on the efficacy of the videos and their appeal to students and teachers.

View Poster

Panel Discussion: Working in Harmony

Sara Niksic a.k.a. Inner Child is a bioacoustician and musician. She is doing a PhD on humpback whale song ontogeny, evolution and vocal learning. Sara is also developing innovative approaches to science communication, with art as her main tool. Lately she has been focusing on music as a way of grabbing people’s attention and interest in her bioacoustics research. In collaboration with several electronic music producers, she released a compilation album that explains the basics of what we know about humpback whale song.

The first three presenters' NSF-funded Project SMILES launched this May a collection of 26 interactive introductory statistics songs for which students choose inputs that will appear in the song played back to them on an online platform. While this song format may provide additional student engagement or learning (we are now analyzing data to assess this), having inputs (especially those that can vary in content or length) can greatly constrain the songwriting in expected and unexpected ways, and we have learned that not all prewritten songs can be retrofitted as interactive songs.