A broad range of observations were made, culled from the various sources mentioned. Those bearing directly on the participatory process are reported here9:
Although the students made significant contributions to the development of the technology, they were not fully cognizant of them. Their experiences transpired within the familiar framework of their regular classroom activities and subsequently the students tended to maintain their traditional roles, vis-à-vis the teacher. In essence, the students were slow to take ownership of their part in the research.
When queried, the students commented that having their regular teacher lead the project engendered an inauthentic working environment. And they often felt overshadowed by the teacher's mathematical and technological expertise. Indeed, they responded much better when working with the other members of the PDG.
The students also suggested that oral de-briefing sessions were more effective than journal writing. They found it easier to communicate orally and were often inspired through the comments of their peers. They also felt that the journal writing was more ``school-like'' and were less motivated to contribute through this means.
One particular oral-debriefing session was conducted in order to seek advice from the students on how the collaborative process could have been better achieved. Several suggestions came out including:
Although the students' distance from their researcher role was prevalent throughout the project, the students became more aware of it as the project unfolded. They were certainly encouraged when they saw implementations or modifications that they had suggested. However, it was during the final simCHET implementation that the students felt most legitimized in the collaboration. At this stage, the students were given open license to conceive their own applets. With full support from the members of the PDG, they worked with familiar low-tech materials and the focus shifted from a teacher/school orientation to that of player/community.
It was during the final phase that the researchers gained the most from the collaboration with the students. Not only were answers found to the study's motivating questions, the PDG found itself reviewing its own assumptions with regards to higher-level issues, ranging from pedagogy to technical implementations. Most importantly, the students gave valuable feedback on the actual composition of the toolkit they should be given, the most intuitive ways for the students to use the toolkit, and the things which would be possible and desirable for them to build.
The students were most motivated when playing their ``initiator'' roles during simCHET. We had planned to provide extra incentives should the students be at a loss of ideas or unmotivated but this was not necessary. It became apparent that students wanted to build games, and they especially wanted to build collaborative ones wherein more than one person played together, possibly at different physical locations.
Although the idea of networked interaction had been in development at the CECM, it had not yet been introduced to the students. It was both suprising and gratifying to see that they could see the potential of the network and the possibility in the technology they were using. In addition to a 'Bean for collaboration, there were other toolkit components required that had not been anticipated by the developers; these included 'Beans for object collision, coloring, and random number generation.
We did not find the students restrained by pre-conceived notions; this could be due to the fact that they were building highly authentic artifacts with which they had had no previous experience. During the simCHET stage of the project, the students were involved in more deep and subtle design concepts. We would argue that they were mature enough to grasp these concepts, well enough to be able to apply their abundant imagination and enthusiasm to the generation of original designs.
