Bridging book: a not-so-electronic children's picturebook

We present and technically describe the implementation of a book prototype: the Bridging Book, a children's mixed-media picturebook that blurs the line between printed and electronic books. Bridging book consists of a printed book and a digital device, placed side-by-side, with synchronized content. Thumbing through the book's pages triggers the device to display the complementary digital content. The physical book requires no batteries or wires. In the current version, the printed illustrations on each page of the physical book are extended into the device screen, offering further interaction. The content can be explored both linearly by reading and thumbing the printed book and/or exploring the interaction on the digital device. We also briefly explain the planned future study observation, with children, to evaluate our prototype.(undefined

Kindergarten Teachers’ Information Technology Teaching Beliefs: The Critical Path Toward Teaching Effectiveness

AbstractWith the advanced information technology application, in education area, computer-assisted instruction has been transferred to the diverse usage of information technology. The research of kindergarten teachers’ teaching belief in the usage of Information Technology and its impact on teaching effectiveness is the aim of the study. With random sampling to distribute and collect questionnaires, 512 kindergarten teachers in Northern Taiwan are selected as the research subjects. With SPSS, Factor Analysis, Regression Analysis, and Hierarchical Regression Analysis are utilized for data analyses. The research outcomes are concluded as follows. 1. Teaching Belief presents partially significantly positive correlations with Teaching Effectiveness. 2. Information Technology appears partially remarkably positive correlations with Teaching Belief. 3. Information Technology reveals partially notably positive correlations with Teaching Effectiveness. 4. Information Technology shows partially significantly moderating effects between Teaching Belief and Teaching Effectiveness. Based on the research outcomes, it is expected to provide some suggestions and reference for kindergartens with Information Technology integrating early childhood education

Let's play together: The design and evaluation of a collaborative, pro-social game for preschool children

This study designed an interactive game for preschool children based on the basic social skill of emotion recognition. Ninety-five preschool children from three schools played two interactive games: a especially designed emotion game and a control game for a touch screen device. The increase in scores in recognising the emotion faces from pre-test to post-test is significant for girls when playing the emotion game, with especially large increases in scores from girls from the most deprived school. The boys scored higher for collaborative play and also scored significantly higher than girls at recognising anger but girls were better at recognising fear. Qualitative analysis using the Talk Taken Down technique showed more egocentric than social dialogue but also more non-verbal expressions of cooperation and enjoyment than verbal interaction with the game. The study concludes by suggesting seven design considerations for designing prosocial, collaborative games

Evaluating First Experiences with an Educational Computer Game: A multi-Method Approach

This paper presents our evaluation approach for a specific case study, namely the evaluation of an early prototype of an educational game with children aged between 12 and 14 years. The main goal of this initial evaluation study was to explore children’s first impressions and experiences of the game on the one hand and to assess the students’ ideas and wishes for the further development of the game on the other hand. The main challenge for the evaluation activities was the selection of the appropriate methodological approach, taking into account children as a special user group. We opted for a combination of different, mainly qualitative and explorative methods that were reported beneficial for work with children in the human-computer interaction (HCI) field. By presenting our multi-method approach, in particular the different steps and procedure within our study, other researchers can get inspirations for follow up activities when evaluating games with children as well as benefit from our experiences in exploring more collaborative methods and methodological combinations

Redesigning the user interface of handwriting recognition system for preschool children

Nowadays there are handwriting recognition systems that can be occupied to assist children learning how to write properly. However, one of the major barriers that hinders them using the system is its complex user interface where the designed is based on adult preferences. Therefore in this paper, we present the guideline to redesign the user interfaces via our experience developing a handwriting recognition system for pre-school children named Handwriting-based Learning Number (HLN). The redesign process has followed eight guidelines and rules as presented by Schniederman. The user interface satisfaction evaluation result done using Questionnaire for User Interface Satisfaction (QUIS) is very convincing where the users are almost satisfied with the redesign process that we did to the user interface. Hence we found that the guidelines are very useful and developers are all welcome to follow it if they intend to do similar system like us

Designing with Children: Reflections on Effective Involvement of Children in the Interaction Design Process

This 
thesis 
contributes 
to 
the
 discussion 
around
 the 
practice
 of
co-design 
with 
children 
by 
providing 
support 
for 
reflections 
to
 practitioners. 
The
 framework
 that 
derived
 from
 this
 research 
aims 
to 
increase 
the
 awareness 
on 
the 
implications 
the 
different 
aspects
 involved 
on
 co‐design
 session 
have
 on 
its 
outcome. 
Researchers 
with 
little 
experience
 in
 managing 
co‐ design
 sessions
 can 
benefit 
from 
it
 when
 deciding
 on 
their 
co‐design 
strategies