AME professor highlighted in STEM article

In the Sept. 19, 2010 edition of New York Times magazine, David Birchfield and SMALLab, the Situation Arts Multimedia Lab, were highlighted on page five of the feature: "Learning by Playing: Video Games in the Classroom." The cross-disciplinary SMALLab research team is led by Birchfield, an associate professor in the ASU School of Arts, Media and Engineering in the Herberger Institute.

SMALLab is a research-based, embodied learning environment that uses K-12 students’ senses of hearing, movement and sight in practical ways to enhance instruction in STEM disciplines. In SMALLab, motion-capture technology tracks students' 3D movements as they are immersed in an interactive space.

For example, as students are learning about a physics concept like velocity, they can hear the sound of their actions getting faster. They can see graphs and equations that represent their motions in real time. They can feel the weight of an object in their hand as they interact in real physical space.

Read about SMALLab’s more than $2.5 million grant from the National Science Foundation and view links to SMALLab videos: http://asunews.asu.edu/20100914_NSFgrantASUSmallab