Simulating "bugs in the walls"

This past spring, in a few classrooms around Chicago, bugs were crawling through the walls. Students couldn't hear the critters, but they could see them on display screens posted around the rooms that provided a visual example of what was burrowing around in the sheetrock. With field guides in hand, these students tracked these bugs -- counting how many existed in each wall, taking notes of which ones laid eggs, and coming back after lunchtime or P.E. to see how the population had grown when they were gone.

If you happen to send your kids to the Chicago public schools, you might be relieved to hear that these bugs weren't real. They were a learning tool -- a simulation system designed by computer science and education researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Peter Malcolm, a graduate student (right, Peter?) at UIC presented a talk at IDC 08 about these "embedded phenomena" (You can read a little more on Tom Moher's page too.) The embeddedness extends beyond the little display screens around the room. It also refers to tiny nodes attached to the walls; students would use a stethoscope to press against the nodes and see zoomed-in pictures of the "bugs" in those particular places on the wall.

This combination of real and simulated material -- of display screens, field guides, and "pretend" populations to track -- led students to become incredibly animated about the work they were doing. "In the seventh grade class, one kid got so invested in his population," Malcolm said, "that he asked his teacher if he could come into to enter a measurement" on a day the school was closed.

There isn't much on the Web yet about WallCology, as it is called, except an academic paper , masters thesis and some other documents. But I suspect that I'm not the only one who will find these wall bugs to be a fascinating example of how technology could be used to turn kids on to learning.