How embodied interactions manifest themselves during collaborative learning in classroom settings

New physical computing toolkits offer much promise for promoting collaborative learning by engendering embodied interactions that can support collaborative discovery. To examine how these can unfold during a learning activity, we conducted a classroom study where pairs of children explored mappings between various sensors and actuators embedded in a physical-digital artifact. We found how a number of embodied interactions emerged that were effectively used to progress learning through the processes of showing, sharing and contestin

MakeMe, codeme, connectus: Learning digital fluency through tangible magic cubes

Recent years have seen an increased empirical interest in designing new approaches to teaching digital fluency to wide audiences. Tangible physical computing interfaces provide much scope for teaching abstract digital fluency concepts in an engaging and playful way. However, questions remain as to how both the form factor and the corresponding task types of such interfaces can be best designed to support learning. In this hands-on workshop, participants will explore how digital fluency topics might be taught through making, discovery learning and coding by interacting with the tangible Magic Cubes toolkit (Figure 1). The workshop will culminate in a discussion of how tangible toolkits for learning can be better designed to encourage collaborative and engaging learning experiences

Democratizing children's engagement with the internet of things through connectus

The emerging Internet of Things (IoT), through which billions of everyday objects are becoming embedded with the abilities to sense their environment, compute data, and wirelessly connect to other devices, has been widely recognized as the new disruptive technology of our time. The predicted ubiquity of connected devices indicates that IoT technologies are quickly becoming an important part of the digital fluency curriculum, however, no research yet exists on suitable pedagogical approaches for teaching children about the IoT. The current research explores the design and deployment of a pedagogical approach and associated tangible toolkit, ConnectUs, that will enable 10-13 year old children to explore and design for the Internet of Things

Giving up Control - A Speculative Air Pollution Mask to Reflect on Autonomy and Technology Design

In many metropolitan cities air pollution regularly exceeds safe levels, with numerous consequences for health and well-being. Current technological solutions often aim to give users control over their air pollution exposure by measuring, processing and sharing data about pollutant levels. We created a speculative face mask that opens and closes autonomously, taking control away from the user. The goal of the speculative design was to highlight the urgency and effect of air pollution on individuals in a tangible and embodied way. Through this critical design object, we question existing solutionist approaches to air pollution and pose questions about autonomy and individual responsibility. In this paper, we share our development process and the conceptual idea behind the mask to inform and inspire other critical objects to address important societal issues at an individual level

Internet of Tangible Things: Workshop on Tangible Interaction with the Internet of Things

The rise of the Internet of Things (IoT) brings abundant new opportunities to create more effective and pleasing tangible user interfaces that capitalize on intuitive interaction in the physical world, whilst utilizing capabilities of sensed data and Internet connectivity. However, with these new opportunities come new challenges; little is still known how to best design tangible IoT interfaces that simultaneously provide engaging user experiences and foster a sense of understanding about the often-complex functionality of IoT systems. How should we map previous taxonomies and design principles for tangible interaction into the new landscape of IoT systems? This workshop will bring together a community of researchers from the fields of IoT and tangible interaction, in order to explore and discuss how parallels between tangible interaction and the properties of IoT systems can best be capitalised on as HCI research moves increasingly toward the Internet of Tangible Things (IoTT). Through ideation and discussion, the workshop will function as a springboard for the community to begin creating new taxonomies and design considerations for the emerging IoTT

Change of Gene Structure and Function by Non-Homologous End-Joining, Homologous Recombination, and Transposition of DNA

An important objective in genome research is to relate genome structure to gene function. Sequence comparisons among orthologous and paralogous genes and their allelic variants can reveal sequences of functional significance. Here, we describe a 379-kb region on chromosome 1 of maize that enables us to reconstruct chromosome breakage, transposition, non-homologous end-joining, and homologous recombination events. Such a high-density composition of various mechanisms in a small chromosomal interval exemplifies the evolution of gene regulation and allelic diversity in general. It also illustrates the evolutionary pace of changes in plants, where many of the above mechanisms are of somatic origin. In contrast to animals, somatic alterations can easily be transmitted through meiosis because the germline in plants is contiguous to somatic tissue, permitting the recovery of such chromosomal rearrangements. The analyzed region contains the P1-wr allele, a variant of the genetically well-defined p1 gene, which encodes a Myb-like transcriptional activator in maize. The P1-wr allele consists of eleven nearly perfect P1-wr 12-kb repeats that are arranged in a tandem head-to-tail array. Although a technical challenge to sequence such a structure by shotgun sequencing, we overcame this problem by subcloning each repeat and ordering them based on nucleotide variations. These polymorphisms were also critical for recombination and expression analysis in presence and absence of the trans-acting epigenetic factor Ufo1. Interestingly, chimeras of the p1 and p2 genes, p2/p1 and p1/p2, are framing the P1-wr cluster. Reconstruction of sequence amplification steps at the p locus showed the evolution from a single Myb-homolog to the multi-gene P1-wr cluster. It also demonstrates how non-homologous end-joining can create novel gene fusions. Comparisons to orthologous regions in sorghum and rice also indicate a greater instability of the maize genome, probably due to diploidization following allotetraploidization