Richard Borovoy

Digital manipulatives: new toys to think with

In many educational settings, manipulative materials (such as Cuisenaire Rods and Pattern Blocks) play an important role in children’s learning, enabling children to explore mathematical and scientific concepts (such as number and shape) through direct manipulation of physical objects. Our group at de MJT Media Lab has developed a new generation of “digital manipulatives”-computationallyenhanced versions of traditional children’s toys. These new manipulatives enable children to explore a new set of concepts (im particular, “systems concepts” such as feedback and emergence) that have previously been considered “too advanced” for children to learn. In this paper, we discuss four of our digital manipulatives-computationallyaugmented versions of blocks, beads, balls, and badges.

Meme tags and community mirrors: moving from conferences to collaboration

Meme Tags are part of a body of research on GroupWear: a wearable technology that supports people in the formative stages of cooperative work. Conference participants wear Meme Tags that allow them to electronically share memes—succinct ideas or opinions—with each other. Alongside of the person-toperson transactions, a server system collects information about the memetic exchanges and reflects it back to the conference-goers in Community Mirrors—large, public video displays that present real-time visualizations of the unfolding community dynamics. This paper presents results from a proof-of-concept trial of the Meme Tag technology undertaken at a MIT Media Laboratory conference.

Participatory simulations: using computational objects to learn about dynamic systems

New technology developed at the MIT Media Laboratory enables students to become active participants in life-sized, computational simulations of dynamic systems. These Participatory Simulations provide an individual, “firstperson” perspective on the system, just as acting in Hamlet provides such a perspective on Shakespeare. Using our Thinking Tags, small, name-tag sized computers that communicate with each other via infrared, we add a thin layer of computation to participant’s social interactions, transforming a group of people into participants in a dynamic simulation. Participants in these simulations get highly engaged in the activities and collaboratively study the underlying systemic model.

GroupWear: nametags that tell about relationships

We have built a set of computationally-augmented nametags capable of providing information about the relationship between two people engaged in a face-to-face conversation. This paper puts forward criteria useful for the design of such interpersonal augmentation, experiences that inform the principles, and initial evidence of their success.

Folk computing: revisiting oral tradition as a scaffold for co-present communities

In this paper, we introduce Folk Computing: an approach for using technology to support co-present community building inspired by the concept of folklore. We also introduce a new technology, called “i-balls,” whose design helped fashion this approach. The design of the i-ball environment is explained in terms of our effort to simultaneously preserve what works about folklore while also using technology to expand its power as a medium for community building.