Bringing school science to life: personalization, contextualization and reflection of self-collected data

We investigate the use of mobile and sensor technologies for school science investigations, to bring about a more engaging and hands-on approach to science learning. We report early findings from two trials carried out within the Participate project, where schoolchildren were given a range of off the shelf and newly developed technologies to carry out data collection and analysis tasks. Indications are that, not only are the tasks engaging for the pupils, but aspects such as personalization of data, contextual information, and reflection upon both the data and its collection, are important factors in obtaining and retaining their interest.