Eva-Sophie Katterfeldt

EduWear: smart textiles as ways of relating computing technology to everyday life

In this paper, we report on the outcomes of the European project EduWear. The aim of the project was to develop a construction kit with smart textiles and to examine its impact on young people. The construction kit, including a suitable programming environment and a workshop concept, was adopted by children in a number of workshops. The evaluation of the workshops showed that designing, creating, and programming wearables with a smart textile construction kit allows for creating personal meaningful projects which relate strongly to aspects of young peoples life worlds. Through their construction activities, participants became more self-confident in dealing with technology and were able to draw relations between their own creations and technologies present in their environment. We argue that incorporating such constructionist processes into an appropriate workshop concept is essential for triggering thought processes about the character of digital media beyond the construction process itself.

A modelling tool to support children making their ideas work

Children can be considered as innovative thinkers and as contributors to novel creations in emerging fields of science and technology, e.g. robotics or smart textiles. How can we support them in making their ideas for future society work? Based on a constructionist learning approach, this paper proposes a modelling tool---a software application which enables children to implement running prototypes even of their intricate ideas. It supports them in abstracting their concrete ideas gradually into rather formal programs for their prototypes. The tool follows a novel approach by combining reverse storyboarding with diagrammatic representation techniques, while holding a strong connection to concrete construction objects. Childrens first tests imply that they succeed in modelling their ideas with the tool, and that it can support the implementation of own ideas along with the modelling and abstraction process.

Considering visual programming environments for documenting physical computing artifacts

In online communities makers share and give feedback on DIY projects. Such feedback could also help novices who get stuck in their projects. However, documenting work in progress is little considered in current tools. We therefore developed a HowTo related web platform for documenting work in progress and studied how children (aged 1318) used it to document their physical computing projects during workshops. The evaluation outcome questions the appropriateness of our web platform and reveals the benefits of visual programming environments for documenting physical computing artifacts. Suggestions are given how to extend visual programming environments into minimalistic documentation tools that provide ways for children to successfully share their work in progress with other makers.

Sustaining girls' participation in STEM, gaming and making

The fields of Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM), computer gaming and activities with digital technologies associated with the Maker movement are still dominated by a rather homogeneous group of (mostly white male) people though there are numerous initiatives and research attempting to change this. With this workshop we aim to bring together researchers, designers, educators and practitioners in IDC to share experience and explore how we can shape and create (learning) environments and tools to sustainably engage girls of diverse backgrounds and all ages in STEM, gaming and Making.

Die EduWear-Umgebung – Wearables konstruierend be-greifen

Zusammenfassung Dieser Artikel stellt das EduWear Kit vor – ein so genanntes Construction Kit mit Smart Textiles, bestehend aus Hardware, Programmierumgebung, Workshopkonzept, Webplattform und Anleitungen, mit denen eigene “Wearables” konstruiert werden können. Durch die Eigenschaften von Smart Textiles spricht das Kit auch weniger technik-affine Menschen an. Wir erläutern das Konzept der Construction Kits, stellen die Komponenten des EduWear Kits vor und geben Beispiele, wie das Kit zum be-greifen von Programmierbarkeit und Wearable Computing Konzepten vielfältig eingesetzt werden kann. Abstract In this article we present the EduWear toolkit – a Construction Kit with Smart Textiles, which comprises hardware components, a programming environment, a workshop concept, webplatform and manuals. The kit allows diverse technically unexperienced target groups to construct personally meanfingul wearables.