CRA at the AAAS Annual Meeting
This year the AAAS annual meeting will be held at the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel in Washington, D.C., close to CRA headquarters. To help engage the public with fun hands on science activities, CRA was invited to participate in AAAS’s Family Science Days on Saturday and Sunday, February 13–14, 2016 from 11:00 a.m.–4:00 p.m.
The Computing Community Consortium (CCC) will also have a panel at the conference on the Friday, February 12, at 3 p.m. titled, “The Confluence of Computing and Society: Emerging Themes in Socio-Technical Systems.” CCC Chair Greg Hager, CCC Vice Chair Elizabeth Mynatt, and an additional speaker will offer perspectives on future ideas and challenges for technology innovations at global societal scales.
For Family Science Days, CRA will be teaming up with KID Museum and Robotics Education & Competition Foundation to have an exhibit focused on engaging youth in robotics and circuitry. CRA is bringing two representatives from Chibitronics to present the Circuit Stickers Project, an activity where visitors will create, craft and code a light-up card with LED circuits.
Circuit stickers are designed to encourage learners to explore electronics through fun arts and craft activities. While creating circuits using the stickers and conductive foils, they are also learning electronics theory like parallel circuits, switches and sensors as well as concepts like conductivity, polarity, current, voltage and resistance. Through debugging their projects they also learn to think critically and systematically about their projects. Once the circuit portion of the activity is completed, the artistic portion allows learners to think creatively and imagine for themselves what to create, to become comfortable exploring and achieving their goals in a space with no “right answer” and become confident in self-directed goals. The two parts of the circuit sticker activity– technical and expressive– allow learners to exercise both sides of their brain and engage in a personally meaningful STEAM (science, technology, engineering, art and mathematics) activity.
If you’re attending the AAAS annual meeting stop by the CCC panel session and Family Science Days booth!
More about our AAAS Family Science Days partners:
The Robotics Education & Competition Foundation seeks to increase students’ interest in STEM by engaging them in hands-on curriculum-based VEX robotics programs and developing business, education, and nonprofit partnerships to achieve its goals. KID Museum cultivates creative, curiosity, and compassion through interactive experiences for children integrating hands-on science, technology, engineering, art, and math learning with an exploration of world cultures and global citizenship.
CCC Panel Abstract:
The growing global pervasiveness of computing technology in everyday life is forging new types of interactions between people, technology, and the physical world. With nearly half the world’s population now online, the opportunities to support and expand human activity by incorporating increasing computational capabilities are present at scales unimaginable just 10 years ago. This symposium examines new trends that illustrate the growing importance of socio-technical systems across the globe. Specifically, the panel examines ways that computers interacting with people will reshape healthcare, technology-for-development, and the physical tasks of everyday life. Healthcare increasingly relies on theories of social engagement and technology to connect patients and caregivers. In discussing technology-for-development projects, the panel uses technology’s Law of Amplification to illustrate the idea that technology amplifies underlying human intent and capacity, and is remarkably consistent in predicting outcomes. Smart physical infrastructure systems also increasingly rely on models of trust and theories of human-computer interaction, at ever-increasing scales, from in-home assistance to collaboration on the manufacturing floor to transportation at city-wide scales. Speakers highlight new research questions that are emerging as computing technologies spread into the hands of nearly every individual around the globe, offering perspectives on future ideas and challenges for technology innovations at global societal scales.
