The Language Pod is trying out a new kind of citizen science where the public can help us design, run, and analyze a whole language science experiment from start to finish. We’ve adapted some of our demos, along with new ideas, into fun games and things on the site, too. We’d love to have any and all of you participating if you’d be interested! Check it out at BLNDIY Citizen Science https://u.osu.edu/blndiy/
informal science learning
2020 EHE Research Forum
The 2020 EHE Research Forum was held in the Ohio Union on St. Valentine’s Day this year. Minseok Choi, Grace Kim, Somin Kim, and I presented in a panel on the Expanding Repertoires project. I provided an overview of project goals, design, and major findings. Somin, Minseok, and Grace presented 2 papers on the bilingual and multi-modal scientific meaning-making of two families, one Korean-English bilingual, one Spanish-English bilingual. They were fabulous!
New grant for public outreach at COSI in Spanish
Anna Babel (Spanish & Portuguese), Kathryn Campbell-Kibler (Linguistics), Laura Wagner (Psychology) and I have been awarded a Global Arts + Humanities Discovery Theme Community Engagement Grant ($58,000). We have 3 project goals for ¡Aquí se habla español!: Public Outreach at COSI in Spanish: (1) develop a set of language science activities that both feature the Spanish language as their subject matter and also can be conducted in Spanish, (2) integrate these activities into the public outreach efforts of the Language Sciences Research Lab at COSI, and (3) create the infrastructure to ensure that the activities continue to be used past the end of the project.
SLRF 2017 Proceedings is out!
The Selected Proceedings of the 2017 Second Language Research Forum, edited by Hope Wilson, Nicole King, Eun Jeong Park, and Kirby Childress, has just been published. I have a chapter therein, ‘Engaged Second Language Research: Studying Stakeholders’ Perspectives on Preschool DLLs’ Science and Language Learning’, co-authored with Brian Seilstad, Jackie Ridley, and Somin Kim. We provide an overview of the Expanding Repertoires project, framing it as an example of engaged L2 research. We focus on the exploratory study in Central Ohio, which examined the perspectives and experiences of informal science and ECE educators and the various bi/multilingual families they serve across contexts.
OH TESOL 2019 Conference
The 2019 Ohio TESOL Conference takes place here in Columbus, Ohio on October 11th and 12th. The theme this year is Collaborate! Educate! Initiate! This is an annual meeting of various stakeholders (teachers, researchers, students, community support networks, etc.) who work with English learners and multilingual speakers in Ohio. I am is the featured speaker on Saturday morning. I will talk about the Expanding Repertoires of Practice project and reflect on the power of TESOL professionals and how we amplify our impact and expand our skills and knowledge through our collaboration with non-TESOL partners (students, families, non-TESOL colleagues, community organizations). I am also leading a workshop with COSI colleagues on hands-on and inquiry-based science with English learners.Webinar for Association of Children’s Museums
On Wednesday, April 17, 2:00 – 3:00 PM EDT, Rita Deedrick (Director, COSI Center for Research and Evaluation) and I will lead a webinar for the Association of Children’s Museums, Museums in Service to Young Multilingual Learners: Findings from an Exploratory Project. We will share key findings from our NSF-funded project that sought to lay the groundwork for improving informal science learning experiences for preschool dual language learners (DLLs). ACM members are invited to join us to hear about what was learned from the project and how the findings may inform future practice and research.
Ohio TESOL 2018 poster presentation
Jackie Ridley and Somin Kim will present a poster on the Expanding Repertoires of Practice project at the Ohio TESOL 2018 Conference. The theme this year is Breaking Through Language Barriers: Success Across Content. Our goal is to communicate to practitioners and researchers the power and potential of science education that is hands-on, multimodal, and driven by children’s curiosity, particularly in superdiverse preschool classrooms like those we have studied in Central Ohio.
Graduation Cake at Language Pod
In the Language Pod we have a tradition of celebrating our students who are graduating and moving on to exciting new endeavors. Cake is central to that tradition. Congratulations to Hannah and Taylor, 2 of my fabulous 5700 students from Spring 2017 who went to to work as Research Assistants in the Pod and who head next to graduate work in Speech and Hearing Sciences!
AAA 2017
At AAA 2017 in Washington, DC I presented a paper ‘Investigating language practices and ideologies with and within museums and preschools’ as part of a double panel on The Anthropology of Education Matters’ in Informal Learning Contexts. As always, the AAAs were an opportunity to reconnect with far-flung friends. This photo shows me with Dr. Marilyn Merritt, a linguistic anthropologist at George Washington University whose work has inspired me since my graduate student days.
AISLab at SLRF 2017
OSU is hosting the 2017 Second Language Research Forum! AISLab will present on Friday at 4 pm in Hagerty Hall 062. Our paper ‘Engaged second language research: Supporting dual language learners science and language learning’ describes the Expanding Repertoires project and presents some preliminary findings from the Exploratory Study. Sunday morning I will serve as moderator for the panel discussion by the plenary speakers Patricia Duff, Brian MacWhinney, Kara Morgan-Short, and Lourdes Ortega. SLRF attendees are then invited to visit COSI and the Language Pod from 11 to 2 pm. Photo: Minseok Choi, Brian Seilstad, Leslie, Jackie Ridley, Somin Kim (current AISLab minus undergrad research assistants Andrea and Anisa).