The Jason Project is designed with an acute awareness of these three
perspectives and incorporates them successfully into the design. The
students are able to demonstrate agency through the Flash based activities,
taking on the role of a helper to the scientists. They are also able
to interact with others, discussing their thoughts with other students
and even asking the scientists questions directly. Finally, the product
is built to be used in the Social context of a classroom with hard copy
curriculum and alignment to state standards.
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Kozma 91'- "Learning with Media"
Kozma argues for the idea that media has an influence on learning.
He suggests that using various form of media as a component of instructional
design can have significant impacts on cognition. Some learners can
benefit from the display of text information in association with pictures
and/or sound. "Various aspects of the learning process are influenced
by the cognitively relevant characteristics of media: their technologies,
symbol systems, and processing capabilities. …Some learners use
these to build rich representations of situations…." (Kozma
91') Jason seeks to leverage the capabilities of a media rich environment
to enhance the learning experience and connect students to the real
world activities of scientists.
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Lepper and Malone "Instrinsic Motivation"
Lepper and Malone argue that computer based educational activities
can significantly enhance the motivation of children to learn. In particular
qualities such as curiosity, control, challenge and fantasy can increase
motivation and positively impact instructional effectiveness. "….
The educational value of an activity can be increased by the use of
motivational devices that involve the simultaneous presentation of material
across multiple modalities.(e.g. graphics and text or audio and visual
channels" The Jason project makes frequent use of multimedia to
motivate students to participate in activities and influence learning.
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Bellamy - Influenced by Vygotsgy
Perhaps the most significant between the Jason project and educational
theory are to be found in Bellamy. Strongly influenced by Vygotsky,
Bellamy argues that "educational technology should support collaboration
between communities of learners, construction of artifacts, and authentic
activities." (Bellamy 96') The Jason project exemplifies these
principles by connecting students nationally to activities that are
directly associated with the real world work of scientists.
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