Michael Eisenberg

The LilyPad Arduino: using computational textiles to investigate engagement, aesthetics, and diversity in computer science education

The advent of novel materials (such as conductive fibers) combined with accessible embedded computing platforms have made it possible to re-imagine the landscapes of fabric and electronic crafts--extending these landscapes with the creative range of electronic/computational textiles or e-textiles. This paper describes the LilyPad Arduino, a fabric-based construction kit that enables novices to design and build their own soft wearables and other textile artifacts. The kit consists of a microcontroller and an assortment of sensors and actuators in stitch-able packages; these elements can be sewn to cloth substrates and each other with conductive thread to build e-textiles. This paper will introduce the latest version of the kit; reflect on its affordances; present the results of our most recent user studies; and discuss possible directions for future work in the area of personalized e-textile design and its relation to technology education.

Fabric PCBs, electronic sequins, and socket buttons: techniques for e-textile craft

The blossoming research field of electronic textiles (or e-textiles) seeks to integrate ubiquitous electronic and computational elements into fabric. This paper concerns one of the most challenging aspects of the design and construction of e-textile prototypes: namely, engineering the attachment of traditional hardware components to textiles. We present three new techniques for attaching off-the-shelf electrical hardware to e-textiles: (a) the design of fabric PCBs or iron-on circuits to attach electronics directly to a fabric substrate; (b) the use of electronic sequins to create wearable displays and other artifacts; and (c) the use of socket buttons to facilitate connecting pluggable devices to textiles. In this work we have focused on using easily obtained materials and developing user-friendly techniques; our aim is to develop methods that will make e-textile technology available to crafters, students, and hobbyists. This paper describes the techniques and employs them as a springboard for a wider-ranging discussion of “e-textile craft”.

The LilyPad Arduino: Toward Wearable Engineering for Everyone

Electronic textiles, or e-textiles, are an increasingly important part of wearable computing, helping to make pervasive devices truly wearable. These soft, fabric-based computers can function as lovely embodiments of Mark Weisers vision of ubiquitous computing: providing useful functionality while disappearing discreetly into the fabric of our clothing. E-textiles also give new, expressive materials to fashion designers, textile designers, and artists, and garments stemming from these disciplines usually employ technology in visible and dramatic style. Integrating computer science, electrical engineering, textile design, and fashion design, e-textiles cross unusual boundaries, appeal to a broad spectrum of people, and provide novel opportunities for creative experimentation both in engineering and design. Moreover, e-textiles are cutting- edge technologies that capture peoples imagination in unusual ways. (What other emerging pervasive technology has Vogue magazine featured?) Our work aims to capitalize on these unique features by providing a toolkit that empowers novices to design, engineer, and build their own e-textiles.

Creativity Support Tools: Report From a U.S. National Science Foundation Sponsored Workshop

Creativity support tools is a research topic with high risk but potentially very high payoff. The goal is to develop improved software and user interfaces that empower users to be not only more productive but also more innovative. Potential users include software and other engineers, diverse scientists, product and graphic designers, architects, educators, students, and many others. Enhanced interfaces could enable more effective searching of intellectual resources, improved collaboration among teams, and more rapid discovery processes. These advanced interfaces should also provide potent support in hypothesis formation, speedier evaluation of alternatives, improved understanding through visualization, and better dissemination of results. For creative endeavors that require composition of novel artifacts (e.g., computer programs, scientific papers, engineering diagrams, symphonies, artwork), enhanced interfaces could facilitate exploration of alternatives, prevent unproductive choices, and enable easy backtracking. This U.S. National Science Foundation sponsored workshop brought together 25 research leaders and graduate students to share experiences, identify opportunities, and formulate research challenges. Two key outcomes emerged: (a) encouragement to evaluate creativity support tools through multidimensional in-depth longitudinal case studies and (b) formulation of 12 principles for design of creativity support tools.

Intelligence in scientific computing

The authors discuss the development of intelligent techniques appropriate for the automatic preparation, execution, and control of numerical experiments.

Log on education: science in the palms of their hands

In the beginning, there are children and the learning experiences we want them to have. Now, let’s bring in technology as the means for enabling those learning experiences. If we’re serious about having children use technology in K–12 classrooms, then we need to convince the gatekeepers of those classrooms as to the worth of the technology. Doing so requires that we speak in the language of the teachers’ profession: first identify the learning experiences and their outcomes, along with why those are desired, and then speak about how to enable those activities via technology. It’s a feature, not a bug, that teachers require this sort of argumentation. Teachers are protecting our children from gratuitous, trendy and ultimately empty, experiences. Here’s what the National Research Council says: “Inquiry into authentic questions generated from student experiences is the central strategy for teaching science.” By “authentic questions” the NRC does not mean questions at the end of a textbook chapter, but rather questions generated by students. The concern, the interest, and the motivation must come from the children; it is their questions. Now, teachers can surely help a child generate a question; an untutored 11-year-old’s question is something like “How

Electronic/computational textiles and children's crafts

An astonishing array of new technologies is currently effecting a revolution in the professional design of textile artifacts. This integration of electronics and computation into textiles likewise suggests new directions in the practice of childrens crafts. In this paper, we present a classification scheme that we believe will prove useful in structuring exploration and discussion of new directions in childrens textile-based crafts. Within the context of this classification scheme, we describe several projects in our lab (along with early pilot-testing efforts) that offer examples of how children can work with computationally enriched textiles. We conclude by describing several extremely exciting-but nonetheless plausible-scenarios for continued work in this area.

Self-disclosing design tools: a gentle introduction to end-user programming

Programmable tools for design offer users an expressive new medium for their work, but becoming acquainted with the tool’s language can be a daunting task. To address this problem. WC present a framework for the design of selfdisclosing tools which provide incremental. situated language learning opportunities for designers in the context of authentic activity. By way of example, we present Chat-f ‘II’ At-f, ;1 programmable application for the creation of graphs and information displays. Chart ‘n’ Art employs a wide variety of self-disclosure techniques whose purpose is to introduce users to the system’s “domain-enrich&” dialect of Lisp. INTRODUCTION In the 1950’s and 60’s, literary critic and educator I.A. Richards published a series of books called Latzgmrge fhrough Pictures (Richards, 1973) as a teaching tool for second language learners. Each page of Richards’ book consists of a picture and one or more sentences describing the scene in the language to be learned. By following the sequence of pictures and sentences from simple to more complex situations, the reader is supposed to acquire a basic understanding of the language. Richards’ pedagogical approach is compelling in that it enables learners to teach themselves a language at their own pace simply by observing connections between images and symbols. His work raises an especially interesting-even urgent-question for the arca of computer science education: Can similar approaches bc found to support the acquisition of programming languages? This paper outlines one possible method of introducing programming concepts that not only supports self-paced learning as in Language flrrough Pictures, but also situates the Icarning expcricnce in authentic activity. What kind of activity? Our research focuses on the complex and creative process of design. since it is designers who can clearly benefit from the ability to program their tools. Programming offers designers the opportunity to transcend the built-in functionality of their software, empowering them to be more crcativc and expressive users. Tools that combine a direct manipulation interface with a domain-oriented language such as the drawing program SchemcPaint (Eisenberg, 1995) and the multimedia authoring package Permission to make digital/hard copies of all or part of this material fat pcrsonnl or classroom use is grant& without fee pnlvidcd thal the copies arc not mndc or distributed for prolit or commercial advantage, the copyri

Making learning a part of life

it notice, the title of the publication and its J:ilc iippcar, and uoLi<c is glvcn that copyright is by permission of the ACM, Inc. To copy otherwise, to rcpuhlish. to post on scrvcrs or to redistribute to lists. rcqiiircs spccitic permission and/or fee. DIS 95 Ann Arbor MI USA ‘ri 1995 ACM 0-89791-673-5/95/08..

Towards a curriculum for electronic textiles in the high school classroom

3.50 Director’ have been dubbed programmable applications. A major challenge with programmable applications is informing designers of the utility of programming and supporting them in their pursuit of programming expertise. These issues are central to the eventual acceptance and creative use of any application-oriented language, and are in fact the key problems for the entire field of end-user programming (DiGiano and Eisenberg. 1995). Although end-user programmable systems represent a burgconing class of software*. support for those users interested in becoming acquainted with their tool’s language is limited. Few organizations formally support the social channels by which experienced users can communicate the cost and benefits of programming to colleagues (Gantt and Nardi, 1992; Nardi and Miller, 1991). Furthermore, the domain specificity and granularity of many embedded languages such as Emacs Lisp (Stallman. 1981) are inappropriate for beginning users (Nardi, 1993, p. 52). With the exception of spreadsheet formulas, most end-user languages fail Nardi’s approachability test which says users should be able to readily employ a language after only limited exposure.3 Printed tutorials, on-line tutoring programs,” and training classes are some of the few support mechanisms widely available to users learning programmable tools. These resources typically have three major drawbacks: I) they require a significant time investment. 2) they expect the learner to process a large amount of information at once, and 3) they expect the learner to be able map the topics covered to his or her particular tasks. Because of the time and effort required on the part of the user, tutorials and training ‘Director and Lingo are a registered trademark of Macromedia Corporation. *Microsoft, for instance, has begun integrating its Visual BASIC language into most of its personal productivity software including Word and Excel. (Microsoft, Visual BASIC. Word, and Excel are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation.) “As a general heuristic, Nardi suggests that “end-user programming systems should allow users to solve simple problems within their domain of interest u~iflritz a few hours of use.” (italics in original) (Nardi. 1993. p. 45) 4Experimental intelligent tutoring systems such as the Lisp Tutor (Anderson. 1985) could hardly be called “widely available,” but they do noncthcless suffer from some of the same problems as traditional on-line tutorials.