PhotoMAT: A Mobile Tool for Aiding in Student Construction of Research Questions and Data Analysis

This paper presents a new mobile software tool, PhotoMAT (Photo Management and Analysis Tool), and students’ experiences with this tool within a scaffolded curricular unit—Neighborhood Safari. PhotoMAT was designed to support learners’ investigations of backyard animal behavior and works with image sets obtained using fixed-position field cameras (“camera traps”) that capture “bursts” of images in response to motion. PhotoMAT was designed to help learners emulate two ways wildlife researchers use camera traps: documenting wildlife diversity via the relative frequency of appearances of different species, and exploring species’ behavior.