Classification of Children's Handwriting Errors for the Design of an Educational Co-writer Robotic Peer

In this paper, we propose a taxonomy of handwriting errors exhibited by children as a way to build adequate strategies for integration with a co-writing peer. The exploration includes the collection of letters written by children in an initial study, which were then revised in a second study. The second study also analyses the "peer-learning" (PL) and "peer-tutoring" (PT) learning methods in an educational scenario, where a pair of children perform a collaborative writing activity in the presence of a robot facilitator. The data obtained in the first two studies allowed us to create a "taxonomy of handwriting errors". A set of writing errors were selected and implemented in an educational activity for validation. This activity constituted a third study, wherein we systematically induced the errors into a Nao robot's handwriting using the {PT} method - A teacher-child corrects the handwriting errors of the learner-robot. The preliminary results suggest that the children in general showed awareness to the writing errors and were able to perceive the writing abilities of the robot

Designing technology for young children: guidelines grounded in a literature investigation on child development and children's technology

This thesis is about the design of technology for children from five to eight years of age. The majority of available guidelines and principles for design or evaluation of technology support the design of products aimed at adults. The limited guidelines available for design of young children's technology do not focus sufficiently on age-related requirements or they offer high-level advice that is only useful in the planning stages of design. Working from the assumption that knowledge available in the literature provides sufficient information to support this process, my aim with this study was to demonstrate how a dependable and useful set of guidelines for the design of technology for children aged five to eight years could be derived from an existing body of knowledge. Development of the guidelines firstly involved research into the psychological theories of children's development to identify those elements of development and the characteristics of children that may have bearing on children's use of technology. Secondly, the literature on children's development of specific skills such as literacy and mathematics was investigated. The available literature on young children's use of technology was studied next and, finally, the applicability of existing design guidelines and principles for children's products evaluated. Throughout this literature investigation the researcher gathered design-relevant factors that could potentially become design guidelines. Using qualitative data analysis techniques, more than five hundred such data elements were systematically coded, processed, analysed and categorised. The result is three hundred and fifty guidelines organised into a framework of six categories and twenty-six subcategories that integrates the relevant theoretical fields and provides practical support for designers. To demonstrate the credibility and usefulness of the emerging guidelines they were used to do an evaluation and re-design of an existing product aimed at the target group. The thesis reports in detail on the different stages of the research, and systematically takes the reader through the process of deriving guidelines from existing theory and research findings, and integrating them into a useful framework.School of ComputingPhD. (Computer Science

Producing Acoustic-Prosodic Entrainment in a Robotic Learning Companion to Build Learner Rapport

abstract: With advances in automatic speech recognition, spoken dialogue systems are assuming increasingly social roles. There is a growing need for these systems to be socially responsive, capable of building rapport with users. In human-human interactions, rapport is critical to patient-doctor communication, conflict resolution, educational interactions, and social engagement. Rapport between people promotes successful collaboration, motivation, and task success. Dialogue systems which can build rapport with their user may produce similar effects, personalizing interactions to create better outcomes. This dissertation focuses on how dialogue systems can build rapport utilizing acoustic-prosodic entrainment. Acoustic-prosodic entrainment occurs when individuals adapt their acoustic-prosodic features of speech, such as tone of voice or loudness, to one another over the course of a conversation. Correlated with liking and task success, a dialogue system which entrains may enhance rapport. Entrainment, however, is very challenging to model. People entrain on different features in many ways and how to design entrainment to build rapport is unclear. The first goal of this dissertation is to explore how acoustic-prosodic entrainment can be modeled to build rapport. Towards this goal, this work presents a series of studies comparing, evaluating, and iterating on the design of entrainment, motivated and informed by human-human dialogue. These models of entrainment are implemented in the dialogue system of a robotic learning companion. Learning companions are educational agents that engage students socially to increase motivation and facilitate learning. As a learning companion’s ability to be socially responsive increases, so do vital learning outcomes. A second goal of this dissertation is to explore the effects of entrainment on concrete outcomes such as learning in interactions with robotic learning companions. This dissertation results in contributions both technical and theoretical. Technical contributions include a robust and modular dialogue system capable of producing prosodic entrainment and other socially-responsive behavior. One of the first systems of its kind, the results demonstrate that an entraining, social learning companion can positively build rapport and increase learning. This dissertation provides support for exploring phenomena like entrainment to enhance factors such as rapport and learning and provides a platform with which to explore these phenomena in future work.Dissertation/ThesisDoctoral Dissertation Computer Science 201

How Can I Effectively Teach Cursive Handwriting to Junior Infants?

This thesis aims to find ways in which cursive handwriting can be taught to junior infant pupils in an effective and child-centred manner, reflective of my ontological and epistemological values. Prior to embarking on this study, I was struggling to teach cursive handwriting to my junior infant class, as per our school policy. I felt torn and disoriented by the complexities and intricacies of teaching children in their first year of school how to read in one font, write in another and to make the appropriate connections between both. I found myself teaching in a traditional and rote way, disregarding my Froebelian values of collaborative learning, enjoyment in learning, and all children receiving what they need to succeed to the best of their ability. This led to my research question; how can I effectively teach cursive handwriting to junior infants? Self-study action research was the most suitable approach for this study, allowing me to investigate my practice as a teacher-researcher, while accounting for my pupils as participants. Eighteen pupils, aged between 4 and 5 years old, participated in the study. The intervention involved examining the effects of various teaching methods for cursive handwriting, reflecting and making observations on their effectiveness, or lack thereof, in my teacher reflective journal and triangulating data with accounts and work samples from my pupils. The findings suggest that children benefit from an approach to initial handwriting instruction focused on process and effort. The children were of a wide range of abilities and therefore an emphasis on the formation of perfect letters was unfair. Instead, focusing on, and praising the effort the children made in the process of letter formation meant every child could be successful. The children needed regular and varied handwriting practice, including a mix of tracing and blocked practice. Finally, designing a cross-age peer tutoring program for handwriting, which I named Pencil Pals, proved to be a highly effective way to teach cursive handwriting to junior infants. Pencil Pals provided the children with an audience, a cursive handwriting role-model and brought handwriting into the social setting. This study has not only evolved my own practice to teaching cursive handwriting, but also my school’s. Due to the success of Pencil Pals in my classroom, it was implemented as a school-wide approach. I feel well equipped to teach cursive handwriting effectively to junior infants, in such a way that is reflective of my values. I also feel prepared to continue to engage in informal action research, identifying areas in which I am not teaching to my values, and through reflective practice, continually improving my teaching

Computers as an environment for facilitating social interaction in children with autistic spectrum disorders

Autism is a developmental condition that affects communication, imagination and social interaction. Of these three impairments, it is the last which has the greatest negative impact on the life of children with autism and their families. Different intervention programs have attempted to address social interaction difficulties but there is clearly a need for a school-based program that helps develop social interaction and promote social skills within educationally 'natural' settings.Teachers, parents and researchers widely believe that children with autism enjoy using computers and in most western countries, most children with autism have access to them at home or at school. Drawing from communication theory, this thesis explores the hypothesis that computers can provide a motivating, real-life environment in which social interaction in children with autism can be facilitated.In a series of staged studies, the ways in which computers might be used to facilitate social interaction are investigated. The first phase established the level of access to computers that children with autism typically now have and how educators currently use computers with this group of children. The experience of those working in non-school based programmes aimed at developing social interaction in children with autism was also explored. It was also necessary to explore any inherent constraints on the development of software specifically aimed at children with autism.Having established available resources and constraints, the thesis then explored the social behaviours of children with autism within a computer-based environment, using play-based activities. In a number of interlinking studies, differences and similarities in social interactions were explored when i) working on a paper-based versus computer-based version of the same two player game, ii) playing the same game at the computer, either against a partner or alone, and iii) working with a partner on a series of graded, computer-based jigsaw puzzles, with the partner acting either as a collaborator or competitor.The findings presented illustrate the potential for eliciting increased social interaction in children with autism when working alongside other with computers, and suggest the possibility that time spent with computers by children with autism may help them to gravitate from a solitary activity towards a social one. The relevance of the findings of these studies to practice are discussed and the need for further studies highlighted

Drawing, Handwriting Processing Analysis: New Advances and Challenges

International audienceDrawing and handwriting are communicational skills that are fundamental in geopolitical, ideological and technological evolutions of all time. drawingand handwriting are still useful in defining innovative applications in numerous fields. In this regard, researchers have to solve new problems like those related to the manner in which drawing and handwriting become an efficient way to command various connected objects; or to validate graphomotor skills as evident and objective sources of data useful in the study of human beings, their capabilities and their limits from birth to decline

Between generations: Imagination, collaboration, and the nineteenth-century child

Shifting ideas about the qualities of children's imaginations transformed relationships between adults and children in nineteenth-century Britain. This dissertation contends that these new paradigms of children's fancy led authors of children's literature to partner with the young as creative collaborators, which accounts for frequent representations of children as an adult author's auditor, coauthor, illustrator, or guiding genius. These intergenerational collaborations were new models of authorship and evidence of a growing cultural imperative to recognize the young as active agents shaping their own social worlds. Alert to the fact that depictions of children are historically variable, I situate children's literature with and against discourses from psychology to education reform, demonstrating how the perceived powers of fancy granted children agency in a variety of cultural arenas. My project, then, offers an alternative to critical accounts that represent children as ciphers fulfilling adults' psychological and sexual desires. My introduction examines children's literature of the early nineteenth century, which I contend was a collaboration between adults Debates about the child's imagination, however, indicate a shift in expectations regarding adults' relationships to children. The remaining chapters detail the consequences of this shift, exploring four ways children were acknowledged as creative collaborators. Chapter one explores how many authors for children, inspired by fairy tale collections and cultural associations between children and preliterate cultures, structured their fictions according to models of oral narration. These authors defined children not as silent listeners but as participants in the narrative. Chapter two investigates coauthorship in the work of Robert Louis Stevenson, who understood composition as a collaboration between multiple familial, literary, and psychological personas. Partnering with his stepson, Stevenson developed a vocabulary of images that resurface throughout his works and express a social model of authorship. My third chapter explores the unruly child, examining children's literature that depicts collaborations between disobedient children and dim-witted adults in the context of education reforms that privileged imagination over adult authority. The figure of the disorderly child suggests anxieties about the imaginative power of those considered socially vulnerable. I conclude with a chapter on illustration, situating images by Edward Lear and Rudyard Kipling against ideas about children and art, arguing that these author-illustrators fuse childlike spontaneity and adult order, representing collaboration through playful images