Using "tangibles" to promote novel forms of playful learning

Tangibles, in the form of physical artefacts that are electronically augmented and enhanced to trigger various digital events to happen, have the potential for providing innovative ways for children to play and learn, through novel forms of interacting and discovering. They offer, too, the scope for bringing playfulness back into learning. To this end, we designed an adventure game, where pairs of children have to discover as much as they can about a virtual imaginary creature called the Snark, through collaboratively interacting with a suite of tangibles. Underlying the design of the tangibles is a variety of transforms, which the children have to understand and reflect upon in order to make the Snark come alive and show itself in a variety of morphological and synaesthesic forms. The paper also reports on the findings of a study of the Snark game and discusses what it means to be engrossed in playful learning

A Playful Experiential Learning System With Educational Robotics

This article reports on two studies that aimed to evaluate the effective impact of educational robotics in learning concepts related to Physics and Geography. The reported studies involved two courses from an upper secondary school and two courses froma lower secondary school. Upper secondary school classes studied topics ofmotion physics, and lower secondary school classes explored issues related to geography. In each grade, there was an “experimental group” that carried out their study using robotics and cooperative learning and a “control group” that studied the same concepts without robots. Students in both classes were subjected to tests before and after the robotics laboratory, to check their knowledge in the topics covered. Our initial hypothesis was that classes involving educational robotics and cooperative learning are more effective in improving learning and stimulating the interest and motivation of students. As expected, the results showed that students in the experimental groups had a far better understanding of concepts and higher participation to the activities than students in the control groups

The Right to Play

This issue of Early Childhood in Focus is published to coincide with the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child's General Comment No. 17 which aims to strengthen implementation of children's right to rest, leisure, play and recreational activities (as set out in UNCRC, 1989, Article 31). 'The Right to Play' offers short summaries of theory, research and policy issues that can inform the implementation of Article 31. Section 1 is about the concept of play, the ways culture defines play in children's lives, the role of play within early childhood pedagogy and children's own views on play. Section 2 looks more closely at the function of play in supporting children's development, including social, emotional and cognitive benefits. Section 3 is about the opportunities and challenges for realizing children's right to play, including the pressures of early schooling as well as child work, and the implications of commercialization and the growing place of new technologies in young children's lives

Weaving theory/practice for art as knowing in early childhood education

Early childhood education has a tradition of arts based pedagogy. Current emphasis on high stakes testing and test scores as evidence of learning, even for young children, has educators moving away from the arts as academic learning. This visual essay is an a/r/tographic inquiry with woven threads of theory/practice from this moving fault zone that support the arts as a way of knowing for the early years. Making and writing with woolen fibers and feathers form a mat as a surface that is thinking with encounters from teaching pre-service early childhood educators with art. The weaving is an opening to understanding that falling, fear, and knowing are temporary and can provoke what might be next for pre-service teachers and young children using art as learning

Where are all the Curious Students? Fostering a Love for Learning Through a Curiology box Approach

As British/UK Universities move towards more business oriented models of education, largely driven by financial goals, league tables and achievement metrics, students are increasingly relying on educators to hand-lead them through their assessments in Higher Education settings. This has been seen to be a particular issue since tuition fee increases, leading to a fee-entitlement approach to education exhibited by some students. This has also had a negative influence on how students approach their learning, leaning more towards a result driven focus with no room for development of discovery and exploration, a lack of curiosity-led learning motivation or an allowance for developing a love of learning. The authors therefore propose that there is a need to rekindle students love of learning in Higher Education by sparking their curiosity through playful methods. This paper explores the theory and background of the use of curiosity in education, presents ‘Curiology’ as an approach, and documents a playful example of how different types of curiosity can be developed through the theoretical ‘making of’ approach of an interactive ‘Curiosity Box’ designed to foster curiosity-led learning around the subject of women's roles at Bletchley Park in World War Two. A discussion of the design, method and pilot feedback of (n =12) participants undertaking the curiosity box experience is presented alongside next stage considerations of future work

The spontaneous formation of stereotypes via cumulative cultural evolution

All people share knowledge of cultural stereotypes of social groups—but what are the origins of these stereotypes? We examined whether stereotypes form spontaneously as information is repeatedly passed from person to person. As information about novel social targets was passed down a chain of individuals, what initially began as a set of random associations evolved into a system that was simplified and categorically structured. Over time, novel stereotypes emerged that not only were increasingly learnable but also allowed generalizations to be made about previously unseen social targets. By illuminating how cognitive and social factors influence how stereotypes form and change, these findings show how stereotypes might naturally evolve or be manipulated

A participatory co-creation model to drive community engagement in rural indigenous schools:A case study in Sarawak

This paper presents the formulated ‘play-to-engage’ model for indigenous community engagement that incorporates factors in cultural protocols and game design thinking. The hybrid model of the participatory co-creation model was formulated in the study that had been rolled out in two rural primary schools in West Borneo. These schools are located in remote villages, away from urban amenities, and technological affordances and resources are limited. There are more than twenty culturally-diversed indigenous tribes in Borneo. Although it is a known fact that indigenous cultures, including those in Borneo, have many cultural protocols and distinctive custom practices, it is still a challenge for researchers who work with such communities to understand, adhere to and follow the cultural protocols. The model looks at incorporating gameplay and culture protocols to drive community engagement. Since play is universal, the creation of a trustworthy partnership between the community and researchers was established through the use of play during the engagement process. Narratives captured in the study represented reflection, problem solving and creativity in the interactions with the indigenous communities, based on the developed indicators of the ‘play-to-engage’ model.</p