Cognitive and affective perspectives on immersive technology in education

This research explains the rationale behind the utilization of mobile learning technologies. It involves a qualitative study among children to better understand their opinions and perceptions toward the use of educational applications (apps) that are available on their mobile devices, including smartphones and tablets. The researchers organized semi-structured, face-to-face interview sessions with primary school students who were using mobile technologies at their primary school. The students reported that their engagement with the educational apps has improved their competencies. They acquired relational and communicative skills as they collaborated in teams. On the other hand, there were a few students who were not perceiving the usefulness and the ease of use of the educational apps on their mobile device. This study indicates that the research participants had different skillsets as they exhibited different learning abilities. In conclusion, this contribution opens-up avenues for future research in this promising field of study.peer-reviewe

Constructing the Cool Wall: A Tool to Explore Teen Meanings of Cool

This paper describes the development and exploration of a tool designed to assist in investigating ‘cool’ as it applies to the design of interactive products for teenagers. The method involved the derivation of theoretical understandings of cool from literature that resulted in identification of seven core categories for cool, which were mapped to a hierarchy. The hierarchy includes having of cool things, the doing of cool activities and the being of cool. This paper focuses on a tool, the Cool Wall, developed to explore one specific facet of the hierarchy; exploring shared understanding of having cool things. The paper describes the development and construction of the tool, using a heavily participatory approach, and the results and analysis of a study carried out over 2 days in a school in the UK. The results of the study both provide clear insights into cool things and enable a refined understanding of cool in this context. Two additional studies are then used to identify potential shortcomings in the Cool Wall methodology. In the first study participants were able to populate a paper cool wall with anything they chose, this revealed two potential new categories of images and that the current set of images covered the majority of key themes. In the second study teenagers interpretations of the meaning of the images included in the Cool Wall were explored, this showed that the majority of meanings were as expected and a small number of unexpected interpretations provided some valuable insights

Constructing the Cool Wall: A tool to explore teen meanings of cool

This paper describes the development and exploration of a tool designed to assist in investigating ‘cool’ as it applies to the design of interactive products for teenagers. The method involved the derivation of theoretical understandings of cool from literature that resulted in identification of seven core categories for cool, which were mapped to a hierarchy. The hierarchy includes having of cool things, the doing of cool activities and the being of cool. This paper focuses on a tool, the Cool Wall, developed to explore one specific facet of the hierarchy; exploring shared understanding of having cool things. The paper describes the development and construction of the tool, using a heavily participatory approach, and the results and analysis of three studies. The first study was carried out over 2 days in a school in the UK. The results of the study both provide clear insights into cool things and enable a refined understanding of cool in this context. Two additional studies are then used to identify potential shortcomings in the Cool Wall methodology. In the second study participants were able to populate a paper cool wall with anything they chose, this revealed two potential new categories of images and that the current set of images covered the majority of key themes. In the third study teenagers interpretations of the meaning of the images included in the Cool Wall were explored, this showed that the majority of meanings were as expected and a small number of unexpected interpretations provided some valuable insights

Designing for oral storytelling practices at home: A parental perspective

Storytelling at home is typically an oral practice that supports parents and children to make sense of their family identity. Parents play a key role in crafting the story plot and facilitating the child’s participation in the storytelling process. Yet in the context of digital technology, interaction design researchers have tended to focus on children and how digital storytelling tools can support them in their learning. Adopting a “family lens” the aim of this research is to understand the character of oral storytelling practice and identify opportunities for digital storytelling design. The findings outline a co-design workshop that involved a team of designers and parents, who regularly engaged in oral storytelling. Grounded in a systematic video analysis of the workshop alongside a reflection of the design decisions that unfolded, we contribute four new design opportunities centring on the themes of flexibility, shared experience, minimalism, and autobiographical memories. These opportunities can guide interaction design researchers interested in designing new digital oral storytelling tools for families

DIGITAL STORYTELLING: TEACHERS’ GUIDE TO ATTRACT CHILDREN’S INTEREST AND MOTIVATION IN KINDERGARTEN’S ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEARNING

Learning English among early childhood is increasingly being presented in many schools. To meet the needs of the times, mastery of English particularly vocabulary has become a new concern to be accommodated in education especially for children in concern to the characteristics of early childhood learning. Preliminary research on two kindergarten-level classes (age of 5 to 6) in a private school showed that there were several problems teachers faced when applying the conventional storytelling method. The alternative solution to this problem is implementing digital storytelling method which is integrating storytelling and digital technology. This research is based on data obtained qualitatively so that it gives the characteristics of descriptive qualitative research that wants to explain the phenomenon of the object of research according to the topic. The data in this study were obtained from the results of field observations in the classroom when the learning process took place. The result showed that digital storytelling method is considered to be able to attract children's attention in following the stories and learning materials brought by the teacher. Student motivation also appears to emerge with the application of the digital storytelling method in learning English. There are also some teachers’ guide to apply this method in English language learning for kids

Hand gesture-based interactive puppetry system to assist storytelling for children

© 2016 The Author(s)Digital techniques have been used to assist narrative and storytelling, especially in many pedagogical practices. With the rapid development of HCI techniques, saturated with digital media in their daily lives, young children, demands more interactive learning methods and meaningful immersive learning experiences. In this paper, we propose a novel hand gesture-based puppetry storytelling system which provides a more intuitive and natural human computer interaction method for young children to develop narrative ability in virtual story world. Depth motion sensing and hand gestures control technology is utilized in the implementation of user-friendly interaction. Young players could intuitively use hand gestures to manipulate virtual puppet to perform story and interact with different items in virtual environment to assist narration. Based on the result of the evaluation, this novel digital storytelling system shows positive pedagogical functions on children’s narrating ability as well as the competencies of cognitive and motor coordination. The usability of the system is preliminary examined in our test, and the results which showed that young children can benefit from playing with Puppet Narrator