Edith Ackermann

Interactive storytelling environments: coping with cardiac illness at Boston's Children's Hospital

This paper describes exploration of uses of a computational storytelling environment on the Car- diology Unit of the ChildrenHospital in Boston, during the summer of 1997. Young cardiac patients ranging from age 7 to 16 used the SAGE environment to tell personal stories and cre- ate interactive characters, as a way of coping with cardiac illness, hospitalizations, and invasive medical procedures. This pilot study is part of a larger collaborative effort between Children ´ Hospital and MERL - A Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratory, to develop a web-based appli- cation, the Experience Journal, to assist patients and their families in dealing with serious medical illness. The focus of the paper is on young patientsof SAGE, on SAGEaffordances in the context of the hospital, and on design recommendations for the development of future computa- tional play kits for expressing and exchanging feelings and ideas. Preliminary analysis of young patientsindicates that children used different modes of interaction-direct, mediated, and differed-, depending upon what personae the narrator chooses to take on. These modes seem to vary with the mindset and health condition of the child.

Filter mediated design : generating coherence in (collaborative) design

Abstract Architectural design involves the integration of diverse, sometimes conflicting, concepts and requirements into a coherent single composition. This paper proposes a method for negotiating architectural design across domains, by examining issues of perception, generation and evaluation, and detailing a prototype in which these mechanisms are augmented using computational agents for achieving coherence and innovation in remote collaborative design. Filter Mediated Design is intended to explore the processes and strategies of constructing intelligent designs and design intelligence.

“Maai”: The Art of Distancing in Karate-Do Mutual Attunement in Close Encounters

Human development implies an evolution of the individuals physical spielraum (room to maneuver) as an adaptively changing dialectical Self-Other relationship, which is achieved through appropriate distancing. In the Japanese culture, distancing is maai (ma, spatiotemporal interval + ai, harmony). Maai integrates space, time, and rhythm, dimensions of being that are deeply rooted in all human actions and relations. Maai is the art of relating and communicating within constructed space-time intervals in and through which people interact.The purpose of the present study is to elaborate a phenomenological and genetic understanding of highly developed forms of distancing, that is, of our understanding of mastery in maai. Although there exist several good descriptions of distancing in everyday life, little is known about how it operates in experts. As a case in point, we analyze maai in the martial arts (karate), where distancing is taught, mastered, and conceptualized to various degrees by teachers and students, and therefore rises to the level of consciousness.

Social Robot Toolkit: Tangible Programming for Young Children

Teaching children how to program has gained broad interest in the last decade. Approaches range from visual programming languages, tangible programming, as well as programmable robots. We present a novel social robot toolkit that extends common approaches along three dimensions. (i) We propose a tangible programming approach that is suitable for young children with reusable vinyl stickers to represent rules for the robot to perform. (ii) We make use of social robots that are designed to interact directly with children. (iii) We focus the programming tasks and activities around social interaction. In other words, children teach an expressive relational robot how to socially interact by showing it a tangible sticker rulebook that they create. To explore various activities and interactions, we teleoperated the robots sensors. We present qualitative analysis of childrens engagement in and uses of the social robot toolkit and show that they learn to create new rules, explore complex computational concepts, and internalize the mechanism with which robots can be programmed.

PatternMagix construction kit software

PatternMagix is a game-like software construction kit. Its constructive-dialogic style of interaction supports learning through playful exploration. In the course of creating colorful tiles and patterns, learners explore geometric operations, like rotation and symmetry. Their moves alternate with automatic moves of the computational device so that the interactions resemble turn-taking in a dialog.

Meaning Mediating Mechanism

Architectural Design and Construction Planning involves the integration of diverse, sometimes conflicting criteria into a coherent solution. This paper presents a theoretical framework of information flow in design, called ‘filter mediated design’, that explores a method for negotiating architectural design and construction planning across domains, by examining issues of perception, generation and evaluation. The theory proposes a semantically sparse shared design model, from which multiple domain specific semantic models are constructed. The paper then details a prototype, called the ‘meaning mediating mechanism’, in which this framework is implemented using computational agents for achieving coherence and innovation in collaborative design. The program dynamically constructs multiple domain specific semantic models from an ambiguous or semantically sparse geometric database. Based on these semantic interpretations, users and computational agents can collaborate simultaneously in a distributed virtual environment to negotiate and generate coherent designs. This research is intended to explore the processes and strategies of constructing intelligent designs, and design intelligence.

Kids story "writers": POGO, Tell-Tale, Sprite

This paper discusses what it means to be literate in the digital age, and what it takes to become so. Childrens narrative and notational skills, we contend, co-evolve and feed one another. Drawing from three case studies (POGO, Tell-Tale, Sprite), we offer insights into the design and evaluation of narrative environments for young children.

Give me a place to stand and I will move the world! Life-long learning in the digital age / Dadme un punto de apoyo y moveré el mundo: el aprendizaje permanente en la era digital

Abstract Research on ‘digital natives’ indicates that today’s youngsters interact with one another, and the world, in ways that are different from the ways we did growing up. At the same time, ‘millennials’ are not unique in their attempts to cope with so-called twenty-first century skill requirements. Adults too are on a treadmill. They too qualify as life-long learners. This paper stresses the ways today’s learners — and those in charge of their upbringing — navigate, position, p[l]ace themselves in the settings they inhabit, however shortly or permanently. Learning everywhere all the time is not a new idea, especially among progressive educators. Yet its unexamined promotion calls for a pause. To be viable, our schools will be ‘edgeless’ but they cannot be place-less! Students will be connected (online) yet in touch (grounded, centred, sentient). Tools-at-hand may be smart but shouldn’t take over. Lastly, educational institutions will need to rethink their raison d’être within a broader range of initiatives, platforms and programs, all brought to the attention of masses of [lifelong] learners in search of [short-term] options in a sea of fleeting opportunities.