Heidi Schelhowe

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.

Of collaborative learning team: an approach for emergent leadership roles identification by using social network analysis

The ability to better understand role performing during the learning process of a collaborative learning team is very crucial, in order to effectively support online students. Leadership roles which have the most influence in directing the team should be carefully recognized. Identifying the emergent team leaders is challenging because these roles are normally distributed and shifted among team members over time. In this paper, a new approach for the leadership roles identification is, thus proposed. The collaboration patterns are examined with different points of social network views to discover the network locations of the leaders. The proposed leadership index is a combination of degree of centrality, closeness and betweenness. The experiment and the simulation results indicate that the proposed index is promising.

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.

Digitale Medien als kulturelle Medien: Medien zum Be-Greifen wesentlicher Konzepte der Gegenwart

Dass das Digitale Medium ein padagogisches Medium, Gegenstand von Bildung sein kann, ist ein nicht selbstverstandlicher Gedanke. Medienpadagogik versteht traditionell technische Medien eher als Gegenstande der Vermittlung oder auch als Hindernisse, die erst einmal angeschaut, analysiert, vielleicht auch beiseite geraumt werden mussen, damit die Lernenden sich schlieslich ins Verhaltnis zur Welt setzen konnen. Computerbildung andererseits in der Gestalt von Informationstechnischer Grundbildung, Computerfuhrerschein oder Informatik sieht es eher als Aufgabe, uber den Computer etwas zu lernen, damit man ihn zweckgerichtet nutzen kann in der Erschliesung von Welt. In beiden Vorstellungen ist der Computer eher Passage-Point, Mittler oder Verhinderer, nicht Gegenstand von Bildung.

Digital Technologies and Marginalized Youth

Marginalization threatens basic issues of fairness and equal opportunity for a significant portion of children around the world. In this extended abstract, we frame the problem of marginalization in light of new economic forces and the increasingly ubiquitous role of digital technologies. We then summarize the contributions to the IDC 2010 workshop on Digital Technologies and Marginalized Youth. We conclude by discussing research trends and identifying challenges for future research.

The Didactical Potential of Robotics for Education with Digital Media

The project “Roberta – girls conquer robotics†was launched by the Fraunhofer Institute (AIS) with the aim to help promote girls’ interest in sciences, mathematics and technology. As a summary of this research program, this article presents substantial results from the scientific evaluation of Roberta and suggests a new pedagogical approach towards the use of robotics in education. We discuss how didactics and technology (LegoMindstorms) interact in Roberta courses and how the materiality of robotics itself plays an important role here; that is, it already comes along as gendered material. Due to that, we draw conclusions towards general educational concepts for digital media. If carefully used as a didactical actor, robotics not only suits boys’ and girls’ interest in technological messiness but enables them for a technological-mediated life instead of just feeling overwhelmed. Robotics, therefore, can function as an appropriate medium for general education in the more comprehensive sense of developing personality and agency.

Nutzerinnenorientierung, Partizipation und Interaktion als Leitprinzipien: Die virtuelle Internationale Frauenuniversität (vifu)

In der Diskussion um die Virtuelle Universitat arbeitet man heute gerne mit dem folgenden Szenario: Durch die weltweite Verfugbarkeit von Wissen werden Studierende sich nur noch bei den „besten“ Universitaten das Lehrangebot „abholen“. So wird sich etwa eine Informatik-Studentin in Deutschland nicht mehr mit dem Durchschnittsangebot einer beliebigen Universitat zufrieden geben, sondern uber das Netz beim MIT oder einem exzellenten privaten Bildungsanbieter mit einem guten Multimedia-Angebot studieren. Virtualitat fuhrt nach dieser Logik zu einer Zentralisierung des Bildungsmarktes. Dem mussen sich alle Universitaten durch virtuelle Angebote stellen, mit denen sie sich einen Platz im weltweiten Wettbewerb sichern oder eine Nische erobern, wenn sie uberleben wollen.1 Virtualitat wird in diesem Szenario also als ein Konkurrenzmodell zur Prasenzuniversitat verstanden.

Inclusive Interactives: the Transformative Potential of Making and Using Craft-Tech Social Objects Together in an After-School Centre

Computational construction kits for children have mostly been designed for individual connections. The focus has been on the individual user, the connections they form with the object under construction, and how these connections shape internal models. There has been comparatively little attention given to interpersonal connections, and how these might enable groups of users to connect through the emerging design object, share skills and knowledge, build on each others contributions, and develop shared understanding. This bias towards the individual has limited potential gains from thinking and acting with others. In the following paper we present a new construction kit (fundakit) and design concept (inclusive interactives) incorporating interpersonal connections. The kit and concept were designed with a view to exploring how such connections might empower groups of youth enrolled in after-school centres situated in economically-disadvantaged communities, to invest in each other, their environment, and in the broader community. We describe the kit and concept, report on their use in a four-year longitudinal study in an after-school centre, and present our findings.

Paper Prototyping for BatiKids: A Technique to Examine Children’s Interaction and Feedback in Designing a Game-Based Learning

Among all critical discussion about the usability of a low-fidelity paper prototyping with in design process, this paper will present the experience of authors when conducting paper prototype usability tests for children. The paper prototyping was applied as a technique in designing BatiKids, a game-based learning environment that is developed to support children in understanding the process of making batik, one of the cultural heritages from Indonesia. The test revealed that children generally enjoyed the game and that the proposed approach has promising potential in empowering the game designers for children. The game is offering supports for children’s understanding of the aesthetics part of a traditional form of art. This paper also discusses how to conduct the usability test with paper prototype, how to evaluate it by using the usability quality metric called as Success Rate, and what to do with the test results.

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.