Questions or concerns regarding any of the studies described below may be directed to the CONNECT Research Office, (310) 825 2622.

PARENTS: Please note that this study falls outside of the UES Blanket Consent form. As such, additional consent forms for this study are being sent home with Intermediate and Upper level students enrolled in the after-school Virtual World and Design Club. Parents must sign and return this form if they would like to participate

Educational researchers have begun to realize that learning does not happen only in school, and that children have many potential resources for learning from different places in their lives (i.e., their “social worlds”). These worlds may include peer circles, online environments, home, athletic teams or music lessons, and community organizations. Yet we do not understand how children make connections between these places and more “formal” learning environments, and how they think of their engagement in these different social worlds. Deborah Fields, a graduate student at UCLA, (working closely with Dr. Yasmin Kafai, a professor from the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies at UCLA, and Dr. Noel Enyedy, Director of Research at UES/CONNECT), is conducting a pilot study to learn more about the connections and conflicts between children’s identities in different social worlds, and how these identities might serve as resources for learning in school. She will be recruiting four Intermediate and Upper level students from the after school Technology Fluency Club to participate in this study, which will include observations in different spaces (classroom, home, and at least one other space), some video taping, and pre/post interviews. Both parental consent forms and student assent forms must be signed for students to participate. If you have any questions about this study, please contact Deborah Fields at (310) 619-4894, or stareyes@gmail.com.

In the coming months, the Upper level classes will engage in a science unit on force, motion, and simple machines. As part of the unit, students will collaborate to create educational software games to teach younger students about science. The teams will learn how to use Scratch, a media-rich programming environment to design interactive games that demonstrate aspects of physics. Researchers will be studying the integration of these digital game design activities in the classroom. As you have already signed the blanket consent form, you do not have to sign any additional forms for your child to participate. As part of the study, we will collect student work. Additionally, if in the blanket consent form you gave us permission to do so, your child may be videotaped during classroom discussions and visits by game testers from younger classrooms. At the end of the project, we will interview students in their design teams. Students will also take an online survey that focuses on their depth of technology skills. The study will be conducted by Dr. Yasmin Kafai, Associate Professor of Education, and Debbie Fields, a Ph.D. student at UCLA. If you have any questions about the study, please contact Dr. Kafai at (310) 206 8150.

PARENTS: Please note that this study falls outside of the UES Blanket Consent form. As such, additional consent forms for this study have been sent home with Intermediate and Upper level students. Parents must sign and return this form if they would like to participate.

This study is part of a larger project that began in 2007, entitled “Children's Negotiations Across Cultural, Class, and Linguistic Borders in Dual Language Schools: Assessing the Development of Transcultural Skills and Practices.” The researchers seek to understand better how immigration status and social class background influence children’s daily interactions, friendship choices and attitudes about others. In addition to observation during structured and unstructured time at school, students in the Upper and Intermediate levels will be interviewed, and questionnaires will be administered to children, their teachers and parents. Participants may be audio recorded as part of data collection. Both parental consent forms and student assent forms must be signed for students to participate. The study will be conducted primarily by Elizabeth White, a Ph.D student at UCLA, and Dr. Rashmita Mistry, Assistant Professor of Education. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact Dr. Mistry at (310) 825 6569 or mistry@gseis.ucla.edu.

Making Science is a 3-year project, aiming to develop and introduce a new science curriculum for Primary students, using scientific data and sensor technology from UCLA’s Center for Embedded Networked Sensing (CENS). This year, the project focuses on curriculum development. To support this development, researchers will observe “science time” in rooms 7 & 8, including student questioning, designing experiments and interpreting information. As parents have already signed the UES blanket consent form, they are not required to sign any additional forms at this time. Additionally, if parents have given us permission to do so, children may be videotaped as part of observation. The study will be conducted primarily by Dr. William A. Sandoval, a professor from the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies at UCLA, in collaboration with Dr. Noel Enyedy, Director of Research at UES/CONNECT. If you have any questions about the study please contact Dr. Sandoval at (310) 794 5431 or sandoval@gseis.ucla.edu.

This project aims to teach Early Childhood students about basic science concepts. Learning sessions, separate from regular instruction, will be programmed to help students remember the information that they learn. In the weeks following the learning sessions, students will be evaluated to gauge how much of the material they are able to retain. Children will also draw the concepts on paper, in order to help them be more reflective as they create representations. As part of the study your child will be interviewed, and we will examine his/her in-class work. As you have already signed the blanket consent form, you do not have to sign any additional forms. Additionally, if in the blanket consent form you gave us permission to do so, your child may be videotaped while they are engaged with lessons. The study will be conducted primarily by Haley Vlach, a Ph.D student at UCLA. She is be working closely with Dr. Noel Enyedy, Director of Research at UES/CONNECT and Dr. Catherine Sandhofer, Assistant Professor of Psychology. If you have any questions about the study please contact Haley Vlach at (310) 206 8286.

PARENTS: Please note that this study falls outside of the UES Blanket Consent form. As such, additional consent forms for this study have been sent home with Intermediate and Upper level students enrolled in the Extended Day Program. Parents must sign and return this form if they would like to participate

This study takes the form of an after-school Virtual World and Design Club for Intermediate and Upper level students in the Extended Day Program at UES. Club members will play on Scratch, a visual programming language that allows designers to create games, music videos, interactive art and more, and Whyville, a large-scale virtual world that encourages youth to play casual science games and design parts for their virtual avatar (personal representation). The study of interactions and impressions from these two clubs will provide the research team with preliminary information on what types of features related to technology fluency youth find engaging, and what issues may arise in connection with their use of online worlds. Both parental consent forms and student assent forms must be signed for students to participate. Participants will fill out a short survey on their previous engagement with technology, and will be interviewed about Scratch and Whyville so that researchers may understand their experiences and gather suggestions for improvement. Participants may also be videotaped at their computers. The study will be conducted primarily by Dr. Yasmin Kafai, associate professor of Psychological Studies in Education at UCLA. If you have any questions about the study, please contact Dr. Kafai at kafai@gseis.ucla.edu or (310) 206 8150.

PARENTS: Please note that this study falls outside of the UES Blanket Consent form. As such, additional consent forms for this study have been sent home with Primary level students. Parents must sign and return this form if they would like to participate

This study will investigate a classroom delivered mindfulness program to a randomized sample of Primary level students at UES. Pre- and post-assessment measures of children's classroom behavior, and questionnaires completed by parents, teachers and students will be used to evaluate the effects of mindful awareness practices (MAPs). MAPs involves learning to create a sense of physical calm, concentrated attention, and moment-by-moment awareness of one's own thoughts, feelings, and actions. The MAPs training program utilizes a curriculum taught by expert meditation trainer Susan Kaiser Greenland, founder of the InnerKids Foundation. In order to participate in the research, parents need to return the signed consent form and completed questionnaires to the UES Research Office (Room 1088E), as described in the parent information packets sent home with Primary students. The study will be conducted by Lisa Flook, Ph.D., Susan Smalley, Ph.D., Connie Kasari, Ph.D., and Jennifer Kitil, B.A., all from UCLA. If you have any questions, please contact the researchers at (310) 206 7528.

This project aims to teach students in Rooms 13 and 14 about the way that beehives are organized to efficiently collect nectar and store it in the form of honey. In addition, to help students learn about bees and other science concepts, the students will be taught a variety of techniques to help them be more reflective as they create representations such as drawings and paintings. As part of the study, children will be interviewed, and we will examine their in-class work. As parents have already signed the blanket consent form, they are not required to sign any additional forms. Additionally, if in the blanket consent form parents gave us permission to do so, children may be videotaped while they are engaged with the lesson. The study will be conducted primarily by Joshua Danish, a Ph.D. student at UCLA. He will also be working closely with Dr. Noel Enyedy, Director of Research at UES/CONNECT. If you have any questions about the study please contact Joshua Danish at (310) 430 5548.

KATES examines how children's temperament and personality develop at school and relate to scholastic success. We explore how traits such as persistence, sociability, and cheerfulness affect children's academic achievement and patterns of friendship during elementary school. We are also interested in how relationships with teachers and other caregivers promote adaptation to school among children with a range of temperament styles. Research methods include meeting with children at school and interviewing them about themselves and their relationships. We also collect parent information regarding children's relationships and personality traits, including worry and anxiety. Some children who have high anxiety are also offered an intervention, in which they learn to use relaxation and positive thinking strategies to increase confidence and focus at school and at home. Please note that this study falls outside of the UES Blanket Consent form. As such, parents must sign and return an additional consent form if they would like to participate. Questions about this study may be directed to Dr. Jeffrey Wood, professor of Education at UCLA, at (310) 825 7292, or jwood@gseis.ucla.edu.

This project is a collaborative effort by teachers and researchers to create an interactive multimedia tool that investigates the “how” of teaching and learning in long-term projects. The finished product—which will be web-based or on CD-ROM—will include video of classroom interaction, interviews with teachers and students and examples of student work. Two years’ worth of video has been collected and teachers and researchers have begun analyzing the data and designing a prototype.

Teachers, researchers and graduate students are working as a team to document the implementation of a safe school system created at Corrine A. Seeds University Elementary School (UES). Developed under the leadership of a UES health educator and a UCLA Department of Psychology faculty member, the system has been at UES for almost six years and has attracted interest from educators, parents and the national news media. This year team members pilot-tested the system at one school in the Santa Monica Malibu Unified School District (SMMUSD); CONNECT is working with UES and SMMUSD to explore means for using Cool Tools in other schools in the district and to follow up with systematic research on the effectiveness of the methods.

As part of UES’s effort to support teacher reflection and professional development, CONNECT has organized a teacher-research group in which teachers develop inquiry questions, learn practical skills to collect relevant information sources and write up their investigations for a variety of practitioner and research audiences.