Nadine Dittert

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.

TechSportiv: using a smart textile toolkit to approach young people's physical education

Physical Education as a school subject is usually not connected to theoretical analysis and cognitive skills, even though the formal description of movements can support good performance. In this paper, we present an approach whereby construction of new and technologically enhanced equipment for sports allows young people to gain an insight into the theoretical side of specific body movements. The following describes an activity-oriented approach to investigate ones own movement and to explore formalized models of physical exercise through construction of tangible materials and computer programs. Experience with a toolkit for constructing technologically enhanced sports wear and accessories are presented.

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.