The River City Project: Part I

This is the first in a series of posts on the River City Project born out of Harvard University's Graduate School of Education.  The River City Project has been around for a number of years now as a research project studying scientific inquiry and 21st century skills in middle school students.  During the project, teams of students are immersed as "scientists-in-training" within a 3D multi-user virtual environment (MUVE) with the task of investigating and design experiments around diseases that are plaguing the city's residents. 

Robin Rauh, a 6th grade science educator at Twelve Corners Middle School in Brighton, chose to lead her students into River City to kick start their experiences in inquiry and experimental design.  According to Robin, her experience has been more than she imagined. She noticed students focus more on the problem before them as well as collaborating in small teams. Her goals going into the experience were to:

• Introduce a new and exciting to learn a core subject
• Get away from books, worksheets, etc.
• To make science exciting

Personally, Robin wanted to challenge herself by trying something new and along the way become more comfortable with technology.  To do so, she reached out to BOCES for training and job-embedded support. 

In the next post we'll learn more about what River City is and how students came together to investigate a problem and design an experiment to test their hypothesis.