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We examined how Idea Wall, a collaboration spatially manipulable interactive note tool, supports collaborative scientific reasoning among students. Through a design-based research approach, the study also aims to identify potential improvements to the tool that can better support collaborative interactions. The Idea Wall has the ability to facilitate spatial manipulation and interactive note-taking supported student engagement and collaboration. This paper contributes to the growing body of research on the use of interactive tools to enhance scientific reasoning skills in collaborative learning environments. By researching the affordances and challenges of the tool, this study provides valuable insights into the design considerations and potential improvements of such tools in building new norms of collaborative discussion for a knowledge community. 

Creating effective middle school STEM curricula requires a combination of individual and collaborative learning. Prior studies showed that finding a proper balance and providing uninterrupted knowledge transmission between different learning modes can be challenging in such mixed pedagogical approaches. In this paper, we present a multi-device interactive educational platform named SimSnap to teach biology curriculum to middle school children. SimSnap facilitates interactions among touchscreen Chromebooks to perform in-class individual and group activities. We present a usability analysis study with eight middle school children where they learn about the influence of temperature on tomato plant growth. Our study demonstrated that SimSnap facilitates group discussions to complete collaborative tasks. It also creates seamless knowledge propagation between prior to current tasks to learn about more complex concepts from previous simpler activities. Middle school children gave overall high usability ratings and positive feedback on SimSnap. This study also helped to outline some design recommendations for future improvements of SimSnap.