Design and Computational Thinking with IoTgo: What Teachers Think

Computational and design thinking are orthogonal and complementary ways of thinking, which are fundamental for nowadays’ learners and yet taught in isolation. Teachers’ understanding of them can be a barrier to their introduction. This paper reports on an intervention for primary- and secondary-school teachers, introducing them to both forms of thinking through hands-on laboratories, revolving around the IoTgo game-based toolkit. Teachers’ ideas of computational and design thinking were investigated with a questionnaire before and after the intervention. Their answers suggest that the intervention was effective and indicate future work related to computational and design thinking

The evolution of a toolkit for smart-thing design with children through action research

Several workshops use toolkits to engage children in the design of smart things, that is, everyday things like toys enhanced with computing devices and capabilities. In general, the toolkits focus on one design stage or another, e.g., ideation or programming. Few toolkits are created to guide children through an entire design process. This paper presents a toolkit for smart-thing design with children. It revolves around SNaP, a card-based board game for children. The toolkit serves to frame the entire design process and guide them through their exploration, ideation, programming and prototyping of their own smart things. By embracing action research, the toolkit was adopted in actions with children, namely, design workshops. Results of actions were reflected over by considering children’s benefits, and they were used to make the toolkit evolve across cycles of action, reflection and development. The paper reports on the latest evolution cycles, ending with the 2020 cycle for continuing smart-thing design during COVID-19 times. The paper concludes with general reflections concerning action research and design with children, toolkits for framing smart-thing design with children, on-going and future work

Achievement Emotions and Peer Acceptance Get Together in Game Design at School

This paper presents a game design experience in primary schools, with children creating game design ideas and prototypes. Children were organized in cooperative groups. Game design tasks were organized following gamification principles, with ad-hoc gamified material. Cooperative learning and gamification served to elicit emotions and social inclusion. This paper measures them as follows. It operationalizes social inclusion with peer acceptance in three different social contexts, measured before and after the game design activity. It tracks achievement emotions experienced during game design at school. Then the paper examines the relationships between achievement emotions and peer acceptance. In this manner, it tackles an open problem in the literature concerning the links between emotions and social well-being in a game design experience. Path analyses indicate that, respectively for received choices and mutual friendships, positive emotions played a significant role in improving children's social relations, and negative emotions were associated with a significant deterioration of social relations, but only for the extra-school leisure context. The paper concludes assessing the study limits and results in relation to game design with and for children

A Tool for Guiding Teachers and their Learners: the Case Study of an Art Class

There is growing interest in how to enable in-service teachers to promote computational skills in their classes. Different researchers also highlight the importance of developing a critical mindset to- ward digital technology. This paper reports a case study, part of a training program for in-service teachers, organised by researchers and the local School District, to bring physical computing into class, and foster critical reflections on technology along the process. The program included teachers for diverse subjects, across primary and high schools. It used the novel IoTgo tool, adaptable to the needs of the different teachers. The study in this paper considers the case of an art class in a high school. According to the reported data analysis, the tool and the structure it offered enabled the teacher to bring computing into her art class, on her own, and learners to reflect along the process from different perspectives

From children's ideas to prototypes for the internet of things:a case study of cross-generational end-user design

A smart bracelet that reacts to a person's heartbeat. A smart bench that invites passers-by to sit close. These and others are smart things, part of the Internet of Things (IoT) and people's lives. However, people are mainly IoT consumers and rarely given the possibility of becoming IoT creators. This paper presents a case study concerning the design of smart things for outdoor environments, with end users as the main creators. Ideas of smart things were collaboratively conceptualised by child end-users with a card-based board game. Their ideas were taken up in the form of inspiration cards within a bachelor's first-year course, by students coming from different high schools. Students started from children's ideas as inspiration triggers and collaboratively evolved some of them into interactive smart-thing prototypes. The paper concludes by reflecting on its results and drawing lessons for future editions of cross-generational workshops related to IoT design with end users.</p

A Toolkit for Human-Centred Engineering: An Experience with Pre-teens

IoTgo is an adaptable toolkit for human-centred engineering with micro-electronics. This paper reports on IoTgo for pre-teens. This guided them from exploring the workings of sensors, actuators, and wireless communication to the development of prototypes with them that interact with people. The paper explains the rationale of the toolkit for pre-teens, and what they accomplished with it

From Game Design with Children to Game Development with University Students

ABSTRACT This paper reports on the development of game design ideas by children. These were specified in structured informal documents and low-fidelity paper prototypes. University students were challenged to develop children&apos;s informal specifications of games into high-fidelity interactive prototypes, and to have these tested with children. What issues did university students encounter in children&apos;s informal specifications? This paper answers such questions by explaining the organization of the development process for students in as much details so as to allow for its analysis and replicability in different contexts

Physical or on the cloud:Play with IoTgo and design smart things

Smart things, such as smart watches, are popular. Designing them requires technical skills and critical reflections in design, e.g., concerning safety risks due to their physical nature or data they exchange. Engaging end-users in design and reflections is thus complicated and yet beneficial, e.g., to make them aware of such risks. Play can help engage different end users, and especially teens. This paper reports on the latest evolution of the IoTgo playful toolkit for engaging different end users, and especially teens, in design and critical reflections. It presents a case-study across a pandemic with IoTgo used by teens and adults.</p

How to enable young teens to design responsibly

Smart things, such as smart watches, are popular among young teens. Designing them requires technical knowledge, concerning the inner workings of physical devices, cloud services, and their interconnectivity. Moreover, designing them responsibly means conducting diverse reflections in design. Engaging young teens in responsible smart-thing design is thus complicated and yet potentially empowering for them. Toolkits for teens can help guide them in smart-thing design and in reflecting in the process. This paper reports on the design process, based on the action-research paradigm, of the IoTgo toolkit, and it discusses the features, progressively discovered along multiple iterations of design and evaluation, that can empower young teens to design smart things while reflecting on their impact, e.g., safety concerns. The paper then concludes with lessons distilled from the insights that emerged from the analysis of the data gathered in the actions undertaken with teens during the design process