TY - JOUR
T1 - COSMOS educational toolkit
AU - Skrimponis, Panagiotis
AU - Makris, Nikos
AU - Rajguru, Sheila Borges
AU - Cheng, Karen
AU - Ostrometzky, Jonatan
AU - Ford, Emily
AU - Kostic, Zoran
AU - Zussman, Gil
AU - Korakis, Thanasis
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 Copyright is held by the owner/author(s).
PY - 2020/10/26
Y1 - 2020/10/26
N2 - This paper focuses on the K-12 educational activities of COSMOS-Cloud enhanced Open Software defined MObile wireless testbed for city-Scale deployment. The COSMOS wireless reasearch testbed is being deployed in West Harlem (New York City) as part of the NSF Platforms for Advanced Wireless Research (PAWR) program. COSMOS' approach for K-12 education is twofold: (i) create an innovative and concrete set of methods/tools that allow teaching STEM subjects using live experiments related to wireless networks/IoT/cloud, and (ii) enhance the professional development (PD) of K-12 teachers and collaborate with them to create hands-on educational material for the students. The COSMOS team has already conducted successful pilot summer programs for middle and high school STEM teachers, where the team worked with the teachers and jointly developed innovative real-world experiments that were organized as automated and repeatable math, science, and computer science labs to be used in the classroom. The labs run on the COSMOS Educational Toolkit, a hardware and software system that offers a large variety of pre-orchestrated K-12 educational labs. The software executes and manages the experiments in the same operational philosophy as the COSMOS testbed. Specifically, since it is designed for use by non-technical middle and high school teachers/students, it adds easy-to-use enhancements to the experiments' execution and the results visualization. The labs are also supported by Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS)-compliant teacher/student material. This paper describes the teachers' PD program, the NGSS lessons created and the hardware and software system developed to support the initiative. Additionally, it provides an evaluation of the PD approach as well as the expected impact to K-12 STEM education. Current limitations and future work are also included as part of the discussion section.
AB - This paper focuses on the K-12 educational activities of COSMOS-Cloud enhanced Open Software defined MObile wireless testbed for city-Scale deployment. The COSMOS wireless reasearch testbed is being deployed in West Harlem (New York City) as part of the NSF Platforms for Advanced Wireless Research (PAWR) program. COSMOS' approach for K-12 education is twofold: (i) create an innovative and concrete set of methods/tools that allow teaching STEM subjects using live experiments related to wireless networks/IoT/cloud, and (ii) enhance the professional development (PD) of K-12 teachers and collaborate with them to create hands-on educational material for the students. The COSMOS team has already conducted successful pilot summer programs for middle and high school STEM teachers, where the team worked with the teachers and jointly developed innovative real-world experiments that were organized as automated and repeatable math, science, and computer science labs to be used in the classroom. The labs run on the COSMOS Educational Toolkit, a hardware and software system that offers a large variety of pre-orchestrated K-12 educational labs. The software executes and manages the experiments in the same operational philosophy as the COSMOS testbed. Specifically, since it is designed for use by non-technical middle and high school teachers/students, it adds easy-to-use enhancements to the experiments' execution and the results visualization. The labs are also supported by Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS)-compliant teacher/student material. This paper describes the teachers' PD program, the NGSS lessons created and the hardware and software system developed to support the initiative. Additionally, it provides an evaluation of the PD approach as well as the expected impact to K-12 STEM education. Current limitations and future work are also included as part of the discussion section.
KW - K-12 education
KW - NGSS curriculum
KW - STEM
KW - computer networks
KW - laboratory experience
KW - outreach
KW - professional development
KW - software-defined radios
KW - wireless networks and communications
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85095445051&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1145/3431832.3431839
DO - 10.1145/3431832.3431839
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AN - SCOPUS:85095445051
SN - 0146-4833
VL - 50
SP - 58
EP - 65
JO - Computer Communication Review
JF - Computer Communication Review
IS - 4
ER -