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The pandemic outbreak of COVID-19 has highlighted an urgent need for infectious disease education for K-12 students. To gather a better understanding of what educational interventions have been conducted and to what effect, we performed a scoping review. We identified and examined 23 empirical researcher- and teacher-designed studies conducted in the last 20 years that have reported on efforts to help K-12 students learn about infectious diseases, with a focus on respiratory transmission. Our review shows studies of educational interventions on this topic are rare, especially with regard to the more population-scale (vs. cellular level) concepts of epidemiology. Furthermore, efforts to educate youth about infectious disease primarily focused on secondary school students, with an emphasis on interactive learning environments to model or simulate both cellular-level and population-level attributes of infectious disease. Studies were only mildly successful in raising science interest, with somewhat stronger findings on helping students engage in scientific inquiry on the biology of infectious diseases and/or community spread. Most importantly, efforts left out critical dimensions of transmission dynamics key to understanding implications for public health. Based on our review, we articulate implications for further research and development in this important domain.

Advances in biodesign, in which principles of engineering and technology are applied to the life sciences, are moving out of laboratories and into daily life. However, they have not made their way into K-12 classrooms. Today's students need to become familiar with biotechnologies so that they can make informed decisions about how they will be applied in the future. Yasmin Kafai and Justice Walker describe some of the programs that can help K-12 students and their teachers to build understanding of this new area of science.

Background: Existing research suggests that one of the challenges for teachers in persisting with innovative inquiry curricula is their difficulty scaffolding students' transitions into technology-supported and open-ended activities. The question of whether students can effectively scaffold one another's transitions has not been previously investigated, in part, we argue, because of a predominant focus in collaborative learning research on short-term tasks and perfunctory "helping" behaviors. Purpose: This article addresses the nature and role of students' collaborations in learning through design, a technology-rich science inquiry curriculum. Within this environment, we examined emergent collaborative patterns among students, the affordances of those patterns for effective learning, and students' reflections on their interactions. We paid particular attention to how students with varying degrees of previous experience in this curricular approach collaborated with one another. Setting: This study took place at a university-affiliated elementary school in a West Coast urban area. Population: Two mixed-grade classes of fourth- and fifth-grade students (n = 63) and their science teacher participated in this study. Fifth-grade students in one class had extensive experiences with learning through design during the previous year. Practice: For 10 weeks during the fall, students in both classes learned about marine biology. During this time, they also worked in teams to create marine simulations using Logo Microworlds programming and multimedia software. Research Design/Data Collection and Analysis: Design-based research guided the creation of the curriculum and examination of its effectiveness. Ethnographic methods, grounded theory, hermeneutics, and discourse analysis were used to collect and analyze video of student collaborations and interviews. Analysis of variance was conducted using the coded results from student interviews to determine significant differences among groups. Results: We found that experienced fifth graders took on many socializing functions, effectively apprenticing younger students into the practices of learning through design. Interviews revealed that both fourth-grade and fifth-grade students were highly reflective about their respective collaborative roles and that experienced students benefited as much as, if not more so, than inexperienced students from this arrangement. Conclusions: Given experienced students' strategic, effective, and thoughtful ongoing collaborations with their fourth-grade counterparts, we introduce and propose the term peer pedagogy to describe these interactions. This term and our constituent results have implications for existing research and practice in collaborative learning and project-based technology-integrated curricula as well as for theory and scholarship on children's roles within learning communities.

This study investigated students' understanding of a virtual infectious disease in relation to their understanding of natural infectious diseases. Two sixth-grade classrooms of students between the ages of 10 and 12 (46 students) took part in a participatory simulation of a virtual infectious disease, which was integrated into their science curriculum. The results from our analyses reveal that students perceived the simulation as similar to a natural infectious disease and that the immersive components of the simulation afforded students the opportunity to discuss their understandings of natural disease and to compare them to their experiences with the virtual disease. We found that while the virtual disease capitalized on students' knowledge of natural infectious disease through virtual symptoms, these symptoms may have led students to think of its transfer more as an observable or mechanical event rather than as a biological process. These findings provide helpful indicators to science educators and educational designers interested in creating and integrating online simulations within classroom environments to further students' conceptual understanding.

With increased computer technology use in schools, preservice teachers must be prepared to deal with ethical issues involved in a range of computer uses, such as students plagiarizing from the Internet or accessing adults-only web sites. We investigated preservice teachers' judgments regarding several scenarios of student uses of the computer and Internet. Results show that most of the preservice teachers believed that appropriate uses of the computer and Internet involve specific classroom and school rules rather than universal considerations. We also asked the preservice teachers to predict elementary school students' responses to the same scenarios. Preservice teachers were at times able to predict students' judgments for whether the behavior was appropriate; however, they were unable to explain why students made those judgments. Our findings provide valuable information for teacher education programs on how preservice teachers can be better prepared for classroom incidents and, in turn, can help students understand the issues involved in various uses of the computer and Internet. (Contains 2 tables.)

Describes a study of third and fifth grade students that investigated moral dilemmas involving computer and Internet use. Significant differences were found between children's moral reasoning in everyday situations compared to those involving computer and Internet use, but gender differences were not consistently detected. (Author/LRW)

Reports on a case study that used archival and contemporary source materials in project activities. Analyzes the curricular science activities as students build and use archives of historical and contemporary naturalist materials. Discusses the feasibility and benefits of using historical source materials in elementary science education. (Contains 28 references.) (Author/ASK)

Examines a three-month software design activity in which mixed teams of girls and boys designed and implemented multimedia astronomy resources for younger students. Finds that the configuration of social, physical, and cognitive spaces in the project environment contributed to a positive change in girls' level of access. Discusses implications for encouraging gender equity in computer use. (Contains 38 references.) (Author/WRM)

Reports on the results of research examining the ability of fourth and fifth grade science and social science students to use Dublin Core metadata elements to describe image resources for inclusion in a digital archive. Describes networked learning environments called Digital Portfolio Archives and discusses metadata for historical primary sources. (Author/LRW)

Discusses the results of a survey in which 291 parents of an urban elementary school reported on their computer equipment at home, the type and frequency of their children's educational software and Internet use, and shared their ideas how better connections between computer use at home and school might be created. (Author/LRW)

Discussion of the use of multimedia in educational computer applications focuses on a project in which seven teams of elementary school students were involved in designing and implementing interactive multimedia resources in science for younger children. Results indicated improvement in science understanding and programming skills. (Author/LRW)

With increased computer technology use in schools, preservice teachers must be prepared to deal with ethical issues involved in a range of computer uses, such as students plagiarizing from the Internet or accessing adults-only web sites. We investigated preservice teachers' judgments regarding several scenarios of student uses of the computer and Internet. Results show that most of the preservice teachers believed that appropriate uses of the computer and Internet involve specific classroom and school rules rather than universal considerations. We also asked the preservice teachers to predict elementary school students' responses to the same scenarios. Preservice teachers were at times able to predict students' judgments for whether the behavior was appropriate; however, they were unable to explain why students made those judgments. Our findings provide valuable information for teacher education programs on how preservice teachers can be better prepared for classroom incidents and, in turn, can help students understand the issues involved in various uses of the computer and Internet. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Evaluates the ability of social science students in fourth and fifth grade to create Dublin Core metadata in Los Angeles, California. Reason for selection of Dublin Core for the study; Indications of research; Identification of areas deserving further study; Overview of the functionality of Digital Portfolio Archives.