Experimental school environments

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Contents 1 Experimental School Environments - 'Today's Stories' 2 Overview 2.1 Future Scenario 3 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 4 References 5 Interesting Links

Experimental School Environments - 'Today's Stories'

Written by Marilyn Panayi, D.M. Roy Author's email address: m.panayi@city.ac.uk, m.panayi@ntlworld.com, d.m.roy@ntlworld.com

Overview

In the 'Today's Stories Project, we were interested in finding our how young children could choose to use a wearable computer (KidsCam) to capture what happen during the school day and how these episodes could be used to stimulate reflection about their every day experiences. All the children who participated on the project were first given the opportunity to explore, play with and use current video cameras, stills cameras, both digital and analogue cameras including polaroid camera technology. Classroom work involved the simulation of working in media & design studios. In addition staff and students were introduced to the ideas of becoming part of a 'Community of Enquiry' where they discussed the questions of: -

• How to create something that does not exist?
• What, if any responsibility do designers and users of wearables have?

The children participated as active contributors and became 'KidSearchers' working with teachers, researchers and professional designer to:-

• Envisage the future
• Be critical thinkers
• Take ownership of material
• Work with both hardware, software and equipment media they did not normally have access to
• Gain new skills
• Explore what they would want to reflect on about their every day experiences

Children responded creatively contributing ideas for the interface ‘look and feel’ of both the KidsCam wearable prototype, the whiteboard 'Composer Software Environment' and the issues of ethic and technology.

Future Scenario

A group of children would choose to work with the wearables. Each wearable is able to communicate through infra red link to other children's wearable and to send the images as video clips or still images to a touch sensitive interactive screen/whiteboard. Software allows children to annotate, manipulate, store, present and share their work. They are sent on an assignment to work on puppetry, storyboarding and interviews about a favourite chosen topics.

Particularly interesting outcomes from the children's perspectives where their concerns about what could be considered the 'ethics' of such technology and the vision for more functionality beyond the adult brief for reflection.

• Ownership and control of the material - Who did it belong to? The person shoot the video or the people being taped
• How could children make sure that the other members of the group did not abuse the use of the equipment? e.g. bullying
• The desire of functionality to edit/transform the material and tell and re-tell their stories.

It should be noted that this early pilot work took place between 1998-2002 a short time before the general availability of video mobile technology and the advent of 'Happy Slapping' and bully via picture or text messaging. The 'Today's Stories' project was one of the 'The Amazing 12', which refers to a collection of research projects. The project briefs were to explore 'How do we build Tomorrow Today? [Ref 1] - How new technologies support our children's' learning in the future? Whatever the debate, the community looked to go beyond conventional boundaries [Ref 2]. Use the links to find our more about the Today's Stories Project and about the other ESE projects, which included intelligent toys and virtual puppets!

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Kidsearcher, staff and parents participating in the Today’s Stories project. Students and network participants i3net ESE projects. ESE - IST FET funders and programme officers. Zeric Ltd, London.

References

1: How do we build tomorrow Today? i3 Annual Conference 2000: Building Tomorrow Today. Joenkoeping, Sweden, http://www.i3net.org/cof/ and http://www.i3net.org/btt (Visited 15-Jul-05). The network brought together 100's of children, teachers, researchers and commercial companies across several European Member countries. The Experimental Schools Environment network (ESE) was the first, and to-date only initiative to have been ambitious enough to attempt such a network of excellence, funded under the auspices of the European Commission's Future and Emerging Technologies Programme http://www.cordis.lu/ist/ (Visited 15-Jul-05).

2: Workshops include: Community-Based Interactive Systems (http://ermis.ee.ic.ac.uk/localnets/workshop/home.htm), Towards Global Communities: A vision from community networking (http://www.canet.upc.es/cn/tgc-workshop.html), Affect in Interactions: Towards a new generation of interfaces (http://gaiva.inesc.pt/i3ws/), and Beyond the Desktop: Physicality and Tangibility in Interaction (http://www.nis.sdu.dk/~roy/btd.html). i3 net magazine issues and conference proceeding can be accessed via http://www.i3net.org/ser_pub/services/magazine/ (Visited 15-Jul-05)

Interesting Links

Experimental School Environments ESE http://www.i3net.org/schools/, where information on projects and partnerships can be found. Specific links to the projects and publications http://www.i3net.org/schools/links.html (Visited 15-Jul-05)

"Magic of Today: Tomorrow’s Technology” M. Panayi. D.M. Roy 2000 http://www.teco.edu/chi2000ws/papers/36_panayi.pdf. (Visited 15-Jul-05)

How Did They Do That I? – Wearable Technology, Producers: M. Panayi & D.M. Roy, Media Studio Workshop, Southern Danish University, Denmark, 1999, How do they Do That II? Wearable Technology for Children. Directors M. Panayi, Melina Mc Kim, London 2000.

Panayi, M., and Roy, D.: "BodyTek: Technology Enhanced Interactive Physical Theatre for People with Cognitive Impairment" in Ryohei Nakatsu, Edward J. Altman, and Claudio Pinhanez (Eds.) Proceedings of ACM 6 the International Multimedia Conference , Workshop on Technologies for Interactive Movies, pp.35-39, 1998.

Panayi, M., Van de Velde, W., Roy, D. M., Cakmakci. O., De Paepe, K., Bernsen, N.O. Today’s Stories, Hand Held and Ubiquitous Computing , Karsrhule, Germany, 1999

Polanyi, M (1967) The tacit dimension , Routledge, London.

Schön, D. A. (1983) The reflective practitioner . New York: Basic Books.

Jordan, B. and Henderson, (1995) A. Interaction Analysis: Foundations and Practice The Journal of the Learning Sciences (4,1): 39–103.

Boal. A. (1995) Rainbow of Desire , Routledge.

Burns. C., Dishman.E., Johnson.B., Verplank.B. (1995) "Informance": Min(d)ing Future Contexts for Scenario- Based Interaction Design, BayCHI August Meeting , Tuesday, August 8, 1995. http://www.baychi.org/meetings/archive/0895.html (Visited 15-Jul-05)

European School Net The Gateway to Education In Europe, included support for online community building tools, that are bringing together communities of teachers and learners from all over the continent http://community.eun.org/ (Visited 15-Jul-05). The site also has other interesting links including e.g. Xplora http://www.eun.org/portal/index.htm (Visited 15-Jul-05).

Manen, Van, M., Levering, B. (1996) Childhood's Secrets: Intimacy, Privacy, and the Self Reconsidered . New York, NY: Teachers College Press.

Searching Virtual Environments http://www.design.chalmers.se/education/summerschool/virtual_environment_for_children/ve_f_children.html (Visited 15-Jul-05)

Aviram, A., (1993) Personal Autonomy And The Flexible School, International Review of Education 39(5), Kluwer Academic Publishers, printed in the Netherlands, 1993, pp.419-433.

Wells, G and Claxton, G. (Eds.) (2002) Learning for life in the C21st: Sociocultural perspectives on the future of education , Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.

Wells, G. (2002) 15. Inquiry as an orientation for learning, eaching and teacher education. In G. Wells & G. Claxton (Eds.) Learning for life in the 21st century: Sociocultural perspectives on the future of education . Oxford: Blackwell. http://people.ucsc.edu/~gwells/Pubs.html (Visited 15-Jul-05)