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The purpose of this paper is to present a workshop model for engaging children and parents in mathematics activities in public libraries or other informal education settings.

This paper explores a workshop model for helping the school-aged children learn mathematics outside the school. The model includes five workshop sessions and designs the parent’s role in the mathematics activities. Each workshop session has both a mathematics task activity and a user interface design activity. The model was implemented in a major Canadian city and a major Chinese city over a period of one month. This paper presents the workshop attendees’ experiences and their feedback on the workshop design. It also presents several suggestions on the design of such workshops.

The parents acknowledged that they learned about how mathematics is currently taught in schools and appreciated the opportunities to interact with their children in the workshops. The children participated in the workshops actively and enjoyed the design sessions the most. The potential of using design activities to help children learn mathematics concepts is recognized.

The findings suggest that future workshops should provide a structure to the parents’ engagement in design activities, offer one design project that spans several design sessions and set aside time for families to mingle and share experiences with each other. A big limitation of this paper is the small sample size – 12 families participated in the workshops on each site. Although the paper offered rich data about the participants’ experiences, a larger sample would have made the findings more generalizable and conclusive.

Computer technologies such as iPad and tablets are increasingly common as public library resources; yet the integration of these technologies into library programs is falling behind. This paper offers one example of how such integration can bring benefits to the patrons, encouraging more considerations to be put on this aspect in library practice.

Although many programs are offered in public libraries that facilitate children to learn mathematics concepts, very less research has been reported on the design of these programs. In addition, the existing programs have not considered the inclusion of parent–child design activities for mathematics learning engagement. This paper reports an empirical study that addresses these research gaps. The encouraging results call for more investigations on this workshop model.

Using the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) surveys (2003–2015), this chapter explores the relationship between the gender gap in math test scores and computer (digital devices) gaming, as a potential “swimming upstream” factor in the quest to close that gap. Using a decomposition based on a pooled hybrid specification, we attribute two to three points (from 13% to 29%) of the gender math gap to gender differences in the incidence and returns to intense gaming. The comparison of the negative versus positive girl-specific effects found for collaborative games versus single-player games suggest a potential role for gaming network effects.

The purpose of this paper is to explore three different types of digital environments for mathematics learning that may support mathematical play and the failure and feedback mechanics present in each.

Interaction analysis and the lenses of failure, feedback and mathematical play are used to analyze the mathematical interactions afforded by three different digital environments.

Each digital environment supports or restrains the potential for mathematical play through mathematical representations, failure and feedback.

The primary contribution of this paper is to highlight different ways in which digital failure and feedback designs can influence the emergent experience of mathematical play.

This study aims to describe the feasibility of designing and fostering pre-service teacher inquiry at the intersection of community and disciplinary engagement. Mapping My Math (MMM), a game-based and mobile learning activity, guided pre-service teachers in playfully exploring mathematics featured in the everyday activities of people and places and creatively representing this inquiry with digital media.

This study draws from design-based research that examined the role of place, digital media and mobility in mathematics teacher education. Design narrative methods describe how MMM was created, implemented and refined to support disciplinary inquiry across settings given the evolution of tools, activities and practices. The study and design narrative address the following question: How can game-based and mobile learning be designed to support pre-service teachers’ disciplinary inquiry of everyday mathematics?

Findings shared in this study’s design narrative attend to the quality of pre-service teachers’ inquiry-as-play, or expressive mobility situated amonglearners’ social and material relations, disciplinary concepts and the built environment.

Implications from this study concern the role of mobile learning in mathematics teacher education to connect school, community and online settings; the potential of gameful design to impact pre-service teacher learning across settings; and the importance of fostering disciplinary inquiry whereby pre-service teachers can “navigate” their own learning.

Game-based and mobile learning designs, like MMM, can create the conditions for cross-setting mobility as generative of inquiry-as-play in mathematics teacher education. MMM encouraged pre-service teachers to playfully leverage disciplinary practices that shaped new relationships with mathematics, their city and the mathematics of place and community.

This study aims to describe a library project exploring innovative options for embedding information literacy skills in the elementary school library by utilizing Minecraft, a virtual world three-dimensional (3D) building game environment.

The small-scale descriptive study, with a follow-up survey, focuses on a group of fifth-grade students in an after-school technology club facilitated by the school librarian. The students designed and built a 3D virtual world library game for younger students to help them learn digital citizenship and information literacy.

Analysis of observations, interviews and videos indicated that students were highly engaged in learning information literacy elements throughout all stages of the project from design, building, implementation and testing of younger students.

Although the small number of students enrolled in the club is a limitation, the feedback provided strong evidence of motivation for learning through gamification. Further research could assess learning outcomes with the curriculum, specifically for digital citizenship and information literacy.

Embedding information literacy into a 3D world allows students to learn computer code, mathematics, game design, and fosters collaboration while demonstrating digital citizenship.

Game design requires teamwork, a real-life skill essential for students entering the work force.

Few articles share student-designed solutions of critical information literacy needs. This study exemplifies constructivist learning in a gaming environment.

Educators recognize that group work and physical involvement with learning materials can greatly enhance the understanding and retention of difficult concepts. As a result, math manipulatives ‐ such as pattern blocks and number lines ‐ have increasingly been making their way into classrooms and children’s museums. Yet without the constant guidance of a teacher, students can easily become distracted, confused, or frustrated. Math games with tangible user interfaces can address the needs of the modern learning environment by providing the guidance that a teacher would while allowing students to work together in a physical environment. This paper describes how math games with tangible user interfaces can be rapidly developed using a library of functions that were designed specifically for tracking visual tags in math games. The paper also discusses pedagogical principles and an approach to designing and developing games that utilize tangible technologies. Examples of math games that have been prototyped this way are presented. The paper concludes with a study that suggests that this approach helps children to stay focused, think about math problems in new ways, and complete the problem at hand. It also suggests that tangible math games may help children to develop problem‐solving skills that transfer to similar problems.

This paper aims to present recently published resources on library instruction and information literacy, providing an introductory overview and a selected annotated bibliography of publications covering various library types, study populations and research contexts.

This paper introduces and annotates English-language periodical articles, monographs, dissertations, reports and other materials on library instruction and information literacy published in 2019.

The paper provides a brief description of all 370 sources and highlights sources that contain unique or significant scholarly contributions.

The information may be used by librarians, researchers and anyone interested as a quick and comprehensive reference to literature on library instruction and information literacy.

The objective of this chapter is to identify the key characteristics of Global Services businesses that will thrive and achieve success in the future. These factors are integrated into three main pillars, which we refer to as the Triple-Win. The first and most obvious pillar is technology as a tool. The second pillar is the design and sustainability of the business model, without which the previous factor would be merely a cost and not an investment. And last but not the least, there is the purpose which gives meaning to the proposal, focusing on the human being and their environment. The DIDPAGA business model sits at the intersection of these three elements.

The purpose of this paper is to provide information about the design principles of educational games in the context of an educational math game example to educational game developers and instructors. Especially, it tries to demonstrate the importance of the academic content-fantasy integration and entertainment factors of educational games from the viewpoint of the experts. For this purpose, as a sample, an educational math game was examined to see how successful is the academic aspect, fantasy aspect, academic-fantasy aspects integration and enjoyment aspect of the game. Good aspects of the game and aspects need improvement were summarized for guidance to game developers while producing educational games.

In this study, heuristic evaluation method was used for evaluating the educational math game. In the scope of this study, an example of modern educational computer game was examined by experts in this study. The integration of academic-fantasy context and enjoyment aspects of the game were analyzed deeply by using qualitative and quantitative data collection methods together.

According to Relevance Embedding Translation Adaptation Immersion and Naturalization rubric results, embedding element received the highest mean score. It showed that the academic content is well coupled with the fantasy/story content. According to GameFlow criteria, clear goals and feedback sections got the highest scores; on the contrary immersion section got the lowest score. Immersion element of the game should be improved. According to the interview findings, more than half of the participants stated that, in terms of academic content of game, players can actively be involved in learning process during the game. The story of the game and elements used in the game have counterpart in daily life. Didactic elements do not affect learners’ flow in the game. It is easy to learn and feedbacks are enough and useful.

This study offered suggestions to designers for developing good educational games which are well balanced with academic and fantasy context.

As educators seek ways to enhance student motivation and improve achievement, promising advances are being made in adaptive approaches to instruction. Learning technologies are emerging that promote a high level of personalization of the learning experience. One type of personalization is context personalization, in which instruction is presented in the context of learners’ individual interests in areas like sports, music, and video games. Personalized contexts may elicit situational interest, which can in turn spur motivational and metacognitive states like positive affect and focused attention. Personalized contexts may also allow for concepts to become grounded in prior knowledge by fostering connections to everyday activity. In this Chapter, we discuss the theoretical, design, and implementation issues to consider when creating interventions that utilize context personalization to enhance motivation.

First, we provide an overview of context personalization as an instructional principle and outline the emerging evidence that personalization can enhance motivation and improve achievement. We then discuss the theory hypothesized to account for the effectiveness of context personalization and discuss the approaches to personalization interventions. We close by discussing some of the practical issues to consider when bridging the design and implementation of personalization interventions. Throughout the paper, we anchor our discussion to our own research which focuses on the use of context personalization in middle and high school mathematics.

The theoretical mechanisms through which context personalization enhances learning may include (1) eliciting positive affective reactions to the instruction, (2) fostering feelings of value for the instructional content through connections to valued personal interests, or (3) drawing upon prior funds of knowledge of the topic. We provide hypotheses for the relatedness of context personalization to triggering and maintaining situational interest, and explore potential drawbacks of personalization, considering research on seductive details, desirable difficulties, and authenticity of connections to prior knowledge. We further examine four approaches to personalized learning – “fill-in-the-blank” personalization, matching instruction to individual topic interests, group-level personalization, and utility-value interventions. These approaches vary in terms of the depth of the personalization – whether simple, shallow connections are made to interest topics, or deep, meaningful connections are made to learners’ actual experiences. The consideration of depth also interacts with grain size – whether content is personalized based on the broader interests of a group, or the individual experiences of a particular learner. And finally, personalization interventions can have different levels of ownership – an instructor can generate the personalized connections, the connections can be made by the curriculum designers, or learners can take an active role in personalizing their own learning. Finally, we discuss the practical implementation issues when bringing context personalization interventions into K-12 classrooms. Personalization can be logistically difficult to implement, given that learners hold a diverse array of interests, and may experience each of those interests differently. In addition, particular types of instructional content may show greater sensitivity when personalization is implemented, and personalization may be most helpful for learners with certain background characteristics.

Realizing the promise of personalized learning is an unsolved problem in education whose solution becomes ever more critical as we confront a new digital age. Context personalization has the potential to bring together several well-established strands of research on improving student learning – research on the development of interest, funds of knowledge, and utility value – into one powerful intervention.