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PROJECT VisMO NEWS

Aug
2021

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2021

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2021

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2021

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2020

VisMO Summer Adventure Camp

The VisMO Summer Adventure Camp (VSA Camp) was held at the USD campus for three weeks during the summer of 2021. Dr. Yaoran Li, Dr. Lisa Dawley, and Dr. Perla Myers developed this program aiming to provide students with a high-quality enrichment program that integrated the Project VisMO purposeful paper folding curriculum and visual programming through Minecraft: Education Edition. This program was made possible thanks to grant support from The San Diego Foundation.

Seventeen students from the Lemon Grove school district were selected to participate in the program and were provided transportation to campus, learning materials and daily lunch. Since it was an in person program, staff and students adhered to a strict COVID - 19 protocol to help ensure the safety of all of the participants. 

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The Reviews Are In! 

This month marks the end of the VisMO Core Owl and Elephant programs. Here are some parent reviews.

Owl (Origami Based Curriculum)

A number of parents described an increase in their child's confidence in communicating and in certain subject areas.  "The program helped my child build confidence by showing her how to teach and instruct others with clarity.""She learned new things ways to fold papers and created new things, also the knowledge in symmetry helped her with school work and she was more confident in that area." One parent commented on the program design that incorporated collaboration in a virtual environment. "The fact that my daughter could collaborate with other students and learn something new outside of her classroom even with the pandemic going on really blessed her and gave her an outlet of freedom and creativity"

Elephant (Literacy Based Curriculum)

A parent from the Elephant group stated that the program, "provided good discussion topics during family dinner centered around book themes and other topics covered in class."  Another family had mentioned: "We liked the consistency of the program. It was a regular event that he could look forward to weekly. He liked the small group setting and ability to shine for him within a small group setting."

Project VisMO Core Program Launches

This month, we are excited to announce we have launched the Project VisMO Core Program, which includes Owl and Elephant learning groups. The Project VisMO Owl Program was created based on feedback gathered from  previous pilot programs, as well as close collaboration with experienced classroom teachers, researchers, Mathematicians and origamists. In the Owl Program, students were introduced to foundational visuospatial concepts and spatial vocabulary that provide tools for success throughout the program. A simplified design thinking process was adapted to help students build connections between the content they are learning and their creative ideas. The Owl Program is taught by five teachers, offering 15 virtual sessions weekly. 

 

The Project VisMO Elephant Program is a literacy based program featuring social emotional development, critical thinking about disabilities and learning differences, environmental respect and awareness. The Elephant curriculum includes grade level friendly texts that are centered around celebrating diversity and inclusion, gratitude and mindfulness, and the importance of valuing relationships. Students have been engaging in small group learning opportunities with teachers offering read-alouds, vocabulary development, journaling, drawing,  and real-life considerations for positive growth within our community. The Elephant Program is taught by four teachers, holding 12 virtual sessions weekly. Currently, the Owl Program consists of 93 students and the Elephant Program includes 86 students. Students were recruited from San Diego, as well as Los Angeles.

Owl & Elephant Pre-Assessments

This month the WestED and the USD Research team completed pre-assessments for students included in the RCT research sample.  The students were randomly assigned to either the Elephant group or the Owl group.  Due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the students were tested remotely via Zoom. The evaluation process included three virtual sessions in which students were assessed in the following areas: spatial visualization, visuospatial working memory, mental rotation, spatial awareness, spatial vocabulary, and visuomotor skills. Mathematical concepts tested covered number line estimation for whole numbers and fractions, arithmetic procedural fluency for whole numbers and fractions, and equation problems. Lastly, the students’ attitudes towards mathematics and their mathematical anxiety were examined. Additionally, the team hired two new Research Assistants, Adaly Solis and Shree Narasimhan. Adaly Solis will manage the project vismo website and will troubleshoot any technical issues with families participating in the program.  Shree Narasimhan will be communicating with parents and ensuring that students are attending classes.

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Adaly Solis

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Shree Narasimhan

Think & Tinker Studio

This month the team successfully completed the second Project VisMO virtual steam camp, Think & Tinker Studio.  For this program the team collaborated with four credentialed teachers, each with an area of expertise,  Tawni Paradise (Engineering education), Celina Gonzalez (Special Education and Multiple Subject Instruction) , Kristin Komatsubara (Mathematics and Teacher Education), and Wesley Garcia (Visual Arts). Their insight and feedback on our current program greatly improved our curriculum and instructional design for the coming RCT in Spring 2021. Additionally their experience during the Think & Tinker studio has given the team invaluable input into the development of Project VisMO teacher preparation program.

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Dr. Taryn Robertson

We are happy to welcome the newest member of the Project VisMO Team Dr. Taryn Robertson.  Dr. Taryn Robertson holds an MEd in Advanced Literacy and Reading Comprehension, and a PhD in Curriculum and Instruction from the University of Denver. She is a mixed methods researcher interested in multicultural education. Specifically, her research examines culturally relevant pedagogical approaches as interventions for successful second language acquisition for English Language Learners (ELL), as well as improvements in reading comprehension and summary writing outcomes for ELL students. Dr. Robertson has published articles in high-impact peer reviewed journals and has presented findings at conferences such as PCRC, AERA, AATC, and NAME. 

Vismo Masterclass

As our community continues to practice social distancing, the VisMO Team launched the first VisMO Masterclass Virtual Steam Camp this month. The team recruited fourth-grade students from all over California. The VisMO team is overwhelmed with a large number of applications and the enthusiasm of children, parents, and teachers.  To prepare for the program, materials kits were printed and packed with care by team members using gloves, a mask, and a disinfected surface.  Students received their packets mailing directly to their homes and were ready to start camp on May 4th. 

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Vismo Brainfood

In response to the COVID 19 pandemic, the VisMO team has launched the VisMO Brainfood Challenge to provide students and their families with engaging hands-on activities as they practice social distancing. A daily origami challenge has been posting on the VisMO website daily over the course of 15 days from March 30th to April 17th. Each challenge was designed with an exploratory task and reflection task for the participants to complete. Resources such as instructional videos and diagrams were also posted for members and visitors of the website to view and utilize. Participants from various school districts in California signed up to become members of the site and some have posted their completed models on our website. The VisMO team hopes that the Brainfood Challenge can provide students with an opportunity to develop their visuospatial skills and keep their brains growing with tangible learning tasks as they shift to distance learning. 

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Last month, members of the curriculum design team had the opportunity to speak with Nobuko Okabe.  Nobuko Okabe is a talented Origamist who has had her designs published in theFOLD by OrigamiUSA and has had models displayed in New York and at Origami conventions.  Nobuko is also the creator of a wonderfully versatile and dynamic unit aptly named the “Super Nobu Unit”. Coined by esteemed origami artist and designer Tomoko Fuse who inspired Nobuko to publish a book entirely dedicated to the unit and corresponding models she has designed, titled “Modular Origami with Super Nobu Unit”.  

 

When speaking to Ms. Okabe about the development of the Super Nobu  Unit, she shared that she developed the unit around 10 years ago but the first insight came almost a bit random. She realized after many years of practice that when a paper is folded twice a pocket is formed.  From there she created her unit by folding opposite corners of a square paper once and then once again, with a crease running perpendicular to each initial fold. Thus creating four pockets and two flaps on either end for insertion.  Nobuko describes the unit as “simple and primitive”, though her models show otherwise. See some of her modular designs below.  

 

Ms. Okabe is also an experienced origami educator. She held a weekly origami club session, where students participated in creating fun and simple origami models to more complex modular origami as students continued to attend club meetings.  Over the years she continued to hold weekly meetings and taught students from 3rd grade through high school. She gave us insight on what models and/or origami skills students would enjoy and be challenged by according to age and grade level. The VisMO team is very excited to incorporate the Super Nobu unit to the VisMO curriculum geared towards 4th graders.  

Stay tuned for news on our next pilot lesson.  To learn more about Nobuko Okabe and her fun designs click on the images below and get folding! 

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2020

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2019

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In December the research team ran two pilot lessons at Carson Elementary during an after school program and conducted an informal focus group after each lesson to gain feedback from the students to refine the activities.  The sessions were comprised of 22-24 fourth graders who engaged in origami folding and spatial visualization tasks. During the first session, the students both enjoyed and felt challenged by learning how to fold a magazine box and problem solving putting together a Sonobe cube without a diagram.  At the second session, the students participated in a short visuospatial skills formative assessment. Students explained the reasons for their responses, which gave valuable insights into their prior knowledge of mathematical and spatial terms and demonstrated the need for students to engage in discussions involving the use of spatial language.  After the assessment, the students explored creating an equilateral triangle from a square, transformed the triangle into a 3-D “Tubis Unit”, and participated in embodied learning activities to scaffold their understanding of reflectional symmetry.  

 

Special thanks to Carson Elementary School and the YMCA after school program for collaborating with the VisMO team on this pilot. 

Pilot Tubis unit

The University of San Diego’s Project VisMO was recently awarded a grant of $1,009,801 from the National Science Foundation, EHR Core Research (ECR). The project, “Fostering Elementary School Students' Visuospatial Skills and Mathematical Competencies through an Origami-based Program," or Project VisMO, starts August 15, 2019 and will conclude July 31, 2022.

VisMo is under the direction of Dr. Yaoran Li, Dr. Perla Myers, and Dr. Vitaliy Popov, in collaboration with Dr. David Geary, Curators' Professor of the University of Missouri-Columbia.

Project VisMO is a three-year project that investigates the causal link between children’s visuospatial skills development and their longitudinal gains in mathematical competencies.

Visuospatial and mathematical competencies are important in most STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) fields and both are underdeveloped in under-served learners in the United States. This project refines an engaging intervention through an iterative design-based research process to help identify the learning and teaching components that can optimally foster children's visuospatial skills.

Project VisMO has a special focus on English Language Learners (ELLs). The project aims to help ELL students make meaning of spatial concepts through hands-on activities with the use of explicit spatial vocabulary, visual displays (e.g., sketches, diagrams), and gestures. One of the attractive features of the VisMO curriculum is that it is less dependent on English proficiency than typical mathematics interventions.

Dr. Li, managing researcher at the Jacobs Institute for Innovation in Education and principal investigator for the project, shared, “I am very excited to start the project and work with an amazing interdisciplinary team of researchers, educators and origami artists. California has the highest proportion (21 percent) of ELLs of any state in the U.S, and they are performing much lower than their non-ELL peers. However, the research on how to foster their mathematical and visuospatial competencies is limited and many misconceptions exist. I believe that the VisMO project has the potential to uniquely contribute to our understanding of ELL students’ spatial and mathematical learning and effective teaching strategies.”

More information about the Jacobs Institute for Innovation in Education can be found on their website: https://www.sandiego.edu/soles/jacobs-institute/

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