Empowering children with ASD and their parents : design of a serious game for anxiety and stress reduction

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is characterized by social interaction difficulties and communication difficulties. Moreover, children with ASD often suffer from other co-morbidities, such as anxiety and depression. Finding appropriate treatment can be difficult as symptoms of ASD and co-morbidities often overlap. Due to these challenges, parents of children with ASD often suffer from higher levels of stress. This research aims to investigate the feasibility of empowering children with ASD and their parents through the use of a serious game to reduce stress and anxiety and a supporting parent application. The New Horizon game and the SpaceControl application were developed together with therapists and according to guidelines for e-health patient empowerment. The game incorporates two mini-games with relaxation techniques. The performance of the game was analyzed and usability studies with three families were conducted. Parents and children were asked to fill in the Spence's Children Anxiety Scale (SCAS) and Spence Children Anxiety Scale-Parents (SCAS-P) anxiety scale. The game shows potential for stress and anxiety reduction in children with ASD

A Lightweight Co-Construction Activity for Teaching 21st Century Skills at Primary Schools

Employing learning processes that promote 21st Century skills is now a requirement in Finnish schools and elsewhere. Participatory design/co-design activities have shown to foster design thinking and computational thinking skills in primary school level participants, but a lightweight applicable model of such an activity is yet to be presented. We develop a lightweight hybrid co-construction method based on software development via two exploratory case studies in a Finnish primary school. For the purpose of evaluating objectively the motivating effects of our activity, we elaborate upon four concerning dimensions that arise from previous studies. In our resulting activity, an adult programmer is partnered with a group of children to, in this case, construct math games together. The children felt empowered and motivated by working with us in this way, however, further study is required on the effects this kind of an activity has in comparison to alternative teaching methods

New Opportunities for Interest-Driven Arts Learning in a Digital Age

Traditionally in the United States, schools and after-school programs have played a promi-nent part in teaching young people about the arts. Arts education has been waning in K-12 public schools in recent times, however. This is especially true in low-income communities, where public schools have often cut back on arts instruction so they can devote limited public education dollars to subjects such as writing and math that are the focus of high-stakes standardized tests.When we look outside of school, however, we see a strikingly different landscape, one full of promise for engaging young people in artistic activity. What makes this landscape possible is an eagerness to explore that springs from youths' own creative passions -- what we call "interest-driven arts learning" -- combined with the power of digital technology.This report is a step in trying to understand the new territory. It gives a rundown of scholarship in the areas of arts and out-of-school-hours learning; offers a framework for thinking about interest-driven arts learning in a digital age; examines young people's media consumption; provides a survey of youths' creative endeavors online and elsewhere, along with a look at the proliferation of technologies that young people are using in the arts; and concludes with thoughts about challenges and possibilities for the futur

An Evaluation of Primary School Children Coding Using a Text-Based Language (Java)

All primary school children in England are required to write computer programs and learn about computational thinking. There are moves in other countries to this effect such as the U.S. K-12 Computer Science Framework (CSF) for development. Debates on how to program and what constitutes computational thinking are ongoing. Here we report on a study of programing by children aged 7 – 11 using Java and elements of computational thinking they experience. Our platform comprises a novel Story-Writing-Coding engine we have developed. We compare novice (children’s) processes of coding an animated story with that of experts (college students) and evaluate the differences using four measures based on the progressive coding of a complete program. We also analyze the use of novice (children’s) computational thinking in this coding process. This research is set against a backdrop of approaches to teaching programing and concepts of computational thinking in recent educational literatur

Teaching and learning in virtual worlds: is it worth the effort?

Educators have been quick to spot the enormous potential afforded by virtual worlds for situated and authentic learning, practising tasks with potentially serious consequences in the real world and for bringing geographically dispersed faculty and students together in the same space (Gee, 2007; Johnson and Levine, 2008). Though this potential has largely been realised, it generally isn’t without cost in terms of lack of institutional buy-in, steep learning curves for all participants, and lack of a sound theoretical framework to support learning activities (Campbell, 2009; Cheal, 2007; Kluge & Riley, 2008). This symposium will explore the affordances and issues associated with teaching and learning in virtual worlds, all the time considering the question: is it worth the effort

Transforming pre-service teacher curriculum: observation through a TPACK lens

This paper will discuss an international online collaborative learning experience through the lens of the Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) framework. The teacher knowledge required to effectively provide transformative learning experiences for 21st century learners in a digital world is complex, situated and changing. The discussion looks beyond the opportunity for knowledge development of content, pedagogy and technology as components of TPACK towards the interaction between those three components. Implications for practice are also discussed. In today’s technology infused classrooms it is within the realms of teacher educators, practising teaching and pre-service teachers explore and address effective practices using technology to enhance learning

Students as creators of educational games: learning to use simple frameworks and tools to empower students as educational game designers

The design of educational games is a powerful pedagogical strategy that can only enter schools if teachers are given the necessary training and support. In this paper we present a training action course for teachers interested in learning how to use simple frameworks and tools to be able to either design educational games themselves or facilitate educational game design by their students. We propose a syllabus, a design framework, and a software solution for digital game creation. This approach has been used in Portugal with middle school teachers and students and has been shown to be effective, resulting in the production of functional educational games (digital and non-digital), with preliminary results showing positive outcomes in learning and engagement.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Microworld Writing: Making Spaces for Collaboration, Construction, Creativity, and Community in the Composition Classroom

In order to create a 21st century pedagogy of learning experiences that inspire the engaged, constructive, dynamic, and empowering modes of work we see in online creative communities, we need to focus on the platforms, the environments, the microworlds that host, hold, and constitute the work. A good platform can build connections between users, allowing for the creation of a community, giving creative work an engaged and active audience. These platforms will work together to build networks of rhetorical/creative possibilities, wherein students can learn to cultivate their voices, skills, and knowledge bases as they engage across platforms and genres. I call on others to make, mod, or hack other new platforms. In applying this argument to my subject, teaching writing in a college composition class, I describe Microworld Writing as a genre that combines literary language practice with creativity, performativity, play, game mechanics, and coding. The MOO can be an example of one of these platforms and of microworld writing, in that it allows for creativity, user agency, and programmability, if it can be updated to have the needed features (virtual world, community, accessibility, narrativity, compatibility and exportability). I offer the concept of this MOO-IF as inspiration for a collaborative, community-oriented Interactive Fiction platform, and encourage people to extend, find, and build their own platforms. Until then and in addition, students can be brought into Microworld Writing in the composition classroom through interactive-fiction platforms, as part of an ecology of genre experimentation and platform exercise

A meta-authoring tool for specifying behaviour in virtual reality environments

Includes bibliographical references (leaves 94-99).In this dissertation, we explore methods for empowering non-programmers with the ability to develop their own virtual environment applications. We explored some of the existing systems to determine what methodologies have already been successfully (or unsuccessfully) applied in the fields of virtual environment systems, authoring tools, and graphical user interfaces. From these methodologies we describe an ideal virtual environment authoring system with which comparisons may be drawn to evaluate existing systems. This ideal system represents a tool ideal in its ability to allow users of differing levels of skill to rapidly create virtual environment applications of any sophistication. Creating such a single, generic authoring tool for every different kind of application is, practically, an impossible task - more so if the authors are non-programmers. A more realistic solution to the problem would be to think of every environment as having a particular context such as a virtual museum or gallery. Creating authoring tools specific to these types of environment contexts greatly reduces the problem. We have therefore produced a progressive meta-authoring system that allows both novice and advanced users to create useful virtual reality applications, allowing the smooth migration of novice users to becoming more experienced. We believe that our system overcomes problems in architecture and support for novice users that can be found in many other authoring systems for virtual environments