Digital Technologies, Children's Learning and the Affective Dimensions of Family Relationships in the Home

This chapter considers how children’s use of digital technologies at home shapes family relationships, notably those of parents and young children growing up in some Minority World families, typically characterized by an increasing access to and prevalence of digital technologies in their everyday lives. The chapter reviews literature on digital technologies in the context of families, with a particular focus on touchscreen technologies. The chapter uses a number of examples to illustrate the wider implications of technology use on family dynamics. It offers an exploration of how the physical design of touchscreens, and in particular the different touch points through which the device can be accessed simultaneously or sequentially by different individuals, can influence the affective flows between children and different individuals in families (parents, grandparents) as they interact together. The review of previous research into affective dimensions of technology use at home is theoretically guided by Goffman’s (1972) consideration of participation frameworks and ecological huddles, as well as by the more recent insights of Goodwin (2000) as to how affect plays out through embodied interaction in the context of a family setting. Vygotsky’s (1967, 1978) notion of sociocultural learning and the contextual nature of learning are used as a framework in the review of studies focused on child’s learning and adult–child interaction with touchscreens. The chapter provides insights into the learning opportunities of touchscreens in family contexts in relation to two key affordances of touchscreens: touch manipulation and personalization. It considers the verbal as well as nonverbal modes of communication in examples of interaction occurring around touchscreens in the home. Recommendations for future research are provided along with the suggestion that children’s learning and the affect flows, which emerge in interactions involving digital technologies, reflect the nature of the technologies’ affordances situated in the wider sociotechnical context in which interactions are unfolding

Lessons from the future: ICT scenarios and the education of teachers

This paper reviews significant events of the last 25 years in schools and teacher education in England and looks ahead to the next 25 years. Various scenarios for the future are examined and the potential is considered for new forms of teachers' initial education and continuing professional development using information and communications technology. It is concluded that the current centrally-controlled national system is increasingly inappropriate to present needs and will fracture under the combination of pressures of a commodified education market, learners' consumerist expectations of personalised provision, and networks of informal learning enabled by widespread access to portable communications technology. Four lessons from this future prediction are drawn, with recommendations for radical changes in government policy and orientation. © 2005 Taylor & Francis

Proceedings of the International Workshop “Re-Thinking Technology in Museums: towards a new understanding of people’s experience in museums"

Proceedings of the International Workshop “Re-Thinking Technology in Museums: towards a new understanding of people’s experience in museums

TinkRBooks : tinkerable story elements for emergent literacy

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2011.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (p. 92-102).Printed words are an abstract representation of concepts. Today parents teach children how to read by demonstrating how text is related to imagery. I present textual tinkerability, an idea for demonstrating reading by using multisensory gestures to expose and alter the text-graphic relationship within the story. Tinkerability allows readers to physically express words as they read, giving them some degree of control over the narrative. Two interactive storybooks called TinkRBooks demonstrate how tinkerability supports parent-child emergent literacy. Design guidelines were developed to showcase how tinkerability can be used for creating educationally meaningful interactivity. TinkRBooks allows parents to gesturally modify and discuss how text relates to concepts within a narrative. TinkRBooks allows children to actively explore the abstract relationship between printed words and their meanings, even before this relationship is properly understood. This ability to explore textual representation changes the way parents read to their children during emergent literacy. When using a TinkRBook, parents spend more time talking, discussing more comprehensive ideas with their children and provoking more meta dialogue than with regular books. TinkRBook also encourages children to drive their reading inquiry, by actively demonstrating the concepts relating to vocabulary schema within the narrative. The result is a new story sharing experience that benefits both parents and children by allowing them to understand how the choice of words impacts the story experience.by Angela Chang.Ph.D

Interaction patterns for smart spaces: a confident interaction design solution for pervasive sensitive IoT services

Smart spaces represent a powerful tool for deploying the new pervasive sensitive services based on Internet of Things products and developed in current Information Society close to users. Researchers have focused their efforts on new techniques to improve systems and products in this area but neglecting the human factors related to psychological aspects of the user and their psycho-social relationship with the deployment space where they live. This research proposes to take into account these cognitive features in early stages of the design of smart spaces by defining a set of interaction patterns. By using this set of interaction patterns it is possible to influence over the confidence that users can develop during the use of IoT products and services based on them. An evaluative verification has been carried out to assess how this design engineering approach provide a real impact on the generation of confidence in the users of this kind of technology