LET's GO! to the Creek: Co-design of Water Quality Inquiry Using Mobile Science Collaboratories

Learning ecological science content and inquiry strategies should increasingly use the new tools from science - sensors for data capture, information visualization for data-analysis, low-cost mobile computers and mobiles for field-based science. The LET's GO! project seeks to develop, implement, research, and sustainably scale a new paradigm for fostering high school student learning in teams for ecological sciences. Our "open inquiry" vision uses mobile computing to provide open software tools/resources, participation frameworks for learner project collaboration, mobile media/data capture, analysis, reflection and publishing. We integrate geo-positional data sensing, multimedia communication, information visualization & Web 2.0 tools to create science learning collaboratories, using co-design methods with teachers, learners, developers, learning & domain scientists. The present paper describes the background for our project, related work, goals, and reports on the success of the co-design workshops and school pilots conducted last year.