The
Child as Learner, Critic, Inventor, and Technology Design Partner: An
Analysis of Three Years of Swedish Student Journals
Allison
Druin 1, 2 and Carina Fast 1, 3
1The Royal Institute of Technology, Centre for
User-Oriented IT Design, Stockholm, Sweden;
2The University of Maryland, Human-Computer Interaction
Lab, College Park, MD, USA;
3Uppsala University, Department of Teacher Training,
Uppsala, Sweden;
Abstract
From autumn 1998 to spring 2001, 27 Swedish
children (14, at age 5 and 13 at age 7) partnered with researchers supported by
the European Union[1] to create new storytelling technologies for children. After each of the many design activities,
children were asked to reflect with drawings and/or writing in a bound paper
journal. As the project concluded in
year three, the children’s journals were analyzed and four constructs emerged
from the data: learner, critic, inventor, and technology design partner. This
study examines the motivation for such a research and learning experience,
describes the changes in roles we saw represented in our child partners’
journals, and suggests possible future directions for educators and technology
developers.
Keywords
critic, early childhood, design partner,
inventor, learner, participatory design, technology innovation
1.0 Children as Inventors
Jerome Bruner, curriculum
theorist and Harvard professor once wrote:
What a scientist does at his desk or in his lab,
what a literary critic does in reading a poem, are of the same order as what
anybody does when he is engaged in like activities—if he is to achieve
understanding. The difference is the degree, not in kind. The school boy
learning physics is a physicist and it is easier for him to learn physics
behaving like a physicist than doing something else (Bruner,
1960, p.72).
Today, educational theorists emphasize learning
models that support active construction of knowledge and skills by each
student. Educators and researchers have moved from supporting environments for
passive assimilation of isolated facts, to advocating ones in which the learner
actively explores the world: adapting, refining, and elaborating internal
models of understanding (Eisner, 1994; Department of Education, 1995; Harel
& Papert, 1990; Papert, 1980; Report to the President, 1997; Ringstaff et
al., 1993; Sandholtz et al., 1990; Vygotsky, 1978). As Marton and Booth (1997)
have explained, learning is a process of exploring what is already known and
moving to what is unknown. Children
need to understand that their existing knowledge can help them to learn that
which they don’t know. Educational
researchers recognize that getting to “be” a scientist, poet, or artist is an
important component of that learning experience (Cooper
& Brna, 2000; Dewey, 1902; Dewey, 1936; Gardner, 1983; Harel & Papert,
1990; Shneiderman, 1998).
When we began our
research with children as inventors of new technologies, we not only considered
our work an opportunity for children to potentially learn, but an opportunity
to make better technologies for children.
What we adults have come to find out is that children have a lot to
teach us particularly about the creation of new technologies for children
(Druin, 1999b; Scaife & Rogers, 1999).
In the sections that follow, children as inventors will be discussed
based on a review of the literature in regards to how children’s invention
experiences can support learning and how children’s involvement in invention
can instigate the development of new technologies. Following this, a discussion of our own research with children as
inventors will be presented in relation to a three-year European Union-funded
project we call “KidStory”. The results
of our work with children will be described as it is reflected in the journals
each child kept as an inventor over the three years of the research. We will also describe the changes in roles
we saw in our child inventors and partners and again support our findings with
examples from the children’s journal drawings, writing, and discussion relating
to the journals.
1.1 How invention supports
children's learning
National curriculum
standards have long stressed the importance of scientific inquiry, reasoning,
observation, iterative design, testing, and analysis (e.g., American
Association for the Advancement of Sciences, 1993; Department of Education,
1995; National Science Education Standards, 1996). The Swedish Curriculum for
the Compulsary school stresses: “The student must believe himself capable of
thinking … ” (p 33) and “… the student must acquire the kind of knowledge he
needs to solve concrete problems in his own surrounding” (p 34). Over the
years, researchers have found that the process of invention in the classroom
can strengthen children’s problem-solving skills (e.g., Fields, 1987; Hudson,
1994; Lewis, 2000; McCormick et al., 1994; Spoehr, 1995), help in learning
subject matter curriculum (Blumenfeld et al., 1991; Finegold & Pundak,
1991; Kafai & Yarnall, 1996) and teach necessary technical skills
(Atkinson, 2000; Harel, 1991; Kafai, 1997).
In recent years, researchers have looked at how the use of technology by
children can support young people as inventors of children’s
technologies/software (Harel, 1991; Kafai, 1999; Druin, 1999b). As Yasimine Kafai, a professor in UCLA’s
College of Education has pointed out, when children are inventors, they move
from being consumers to producers of new technologies (Kafai et al.,
1997). This is consistent with the
literature that suggests that children should be offered learning opportunities
to construct their own paths to knowledge, something researchers have come to
call “constructivist” learning theory (Papert, 1980; Harel & Papert, 1990).
In the Swedish Preschool recommendations for new curriculum development, it
suggests: “When children are constructing their own environment with the use of
different materials they develop an understanding of a number of fundamental
functions. To understand the proportions of a room, it is fundamental to
understand mathematics and physics” (p 43).
The purpose is not to teach children to become extraordinary scientific
experts, but to engage, excite, and compel them to learn among other things
about science, math, language arts, communication, and even teamwork while
using the tools of technology.
One high school teacher who teaches robotics to his students in California described their learning experience this way:
Robotics motivates students to
make plans, to accomplish, to look forward, to achieve and to feel good about
themselves, in some cases for the first time in their lives. The robotics class itself is set up to allow
students to feel comfortable with the new and sometimes very complicated
concepts that robotics brings with it.
To build an autonomous robot, students must learn the basic concepts of
mechanics, engineering and “Interactive C” computer programming. They must also learn the skills of effective
communication, teamwork and problem solving (Miller & Stein, 2000).
Professor Priscilla Norton, a teacher educator
at George Mason University who focuses on integrating technology in schools,
has explained, “A problem-centered curriculum in the disciplines places a
solution to a real-world problem of interest at the center of the learning
experience….Students’ ability to solve the problem, to present their solution,
and to revise their solutions in light of additional information becomes the
goals. Placing the problem at the
center emphasizes the students’ doing rather than their mastery of discrete
pieces of information and skills” (Norton, 1992).
1.2 How child invention can
support the development of new technologies
In recent years, a growing awareness of the
power of children as consumers has come to light. According to one study, it is believed that in 1999, teens
influenced household purchasing decisions as much as $200-$500 billion US
(Colkin, February 12, 2001). Another study estimates that even young children
between the ages of four and 12 years of age have as much as $190 billion US in
purchase influence (Sifton, December 1999).
This coupled with expectations that children may become the fastest
growing market in new wireless technologies (Colkin, February 12, 2001), has
adults very interested in what children have to say about technologies. As futurist, Douglas Rushkoff has written,
Rather
than focusing on how we, as adults should inform our children’s activities with
educational tidbits for their better development, let’s appreciate the national
adaptive skills demonstrated by our kids and look to them for answers to some
of our own problems in adapting to post modernity. Kids are our test sample—our advance scouts. They are already the things we must become (Rushkoff, 1996).
Researchers
have come to see that children possess certain abilities that can help in
solving real-world problems for adults as well as children. Invention activities for children need not
be limited to classroom exercises that can demonstrate certain
competencies. In recent years,
demonstration projects in the scientific community have shown children to be
researchers in everything from biology to earth sciences, to technology
development. For example, in the Tom
Sawyer Project, 8-10 year old elementary school students worked with Hofstra
University researcher Marty Condon to identify new species of fruit flies
(McQuiston, 1995). Under a grant from
the National Science Foundation, numerous new species were identifies and later
reported in such journals as Systematic
Entomology and the Journal of
Conservation Biology. Dr. Condon
explained, “As a scientist, you’re trained not to see certain things, not to
look in places where you’ve never found useful information. There’s a real advantage to opening things
up to people who don’t have those kinds of preconceptions (McQuiston, 1995, p.
A10).
Another pivotal example that has since been a
model for other technology-infused learning experiences was the National
Geographic KidsNetwork, developed by the Technical Education Research Center
(TERC). Children were asked to be environmental scientists in measuring such
things as acid rain or water pollutants in their environment (Julyan,
1993). They collaborated using
technology to share their data with other student scientists as well as an
adult mentor. With this learning experience,
children contributed to their own scientific knowledge and the local community’s
understanding of environmental issues (Tinker, 1993). What researchers found was that the scientific data that children
were collecting was so important that the children testified to the United
States Congress in 1992 on such environmental concerns as acid rain (Tinker,
1993).
In recent years, numerous methodologies have been developed that bring technology users into the development process. Users have been described as active partners (Bjerknes et al., 1987; Bodker et al., 2000; Schuler & Namioka, 1993), inspectors or testers (Nielsen & Mack, 1994), or research participants to be observed and/or interviewed (Beyer & Holtzblatt, 1998; Erickson & Stull, 1998). With user input, technology can be shaped and changed in ways that may be meaningful for such users in the future. While user involvement is well understood as important to the technology research and development process, users that are children are less commonly involved than adults. When children’s input is sought out, it is typically done so over short periods of time (e.g., a day, a few weeks, perhaps a few months). Children are most frequently asked to be technology testers in short intensive workshops or school settings (e.g., Loh, et al., 1998; Oosterholt, et al., 1996). However, researchers are beginning to understand the limitations of what children can contribute in these situations (Druin, 1999a; Scaife & Rogers, 1999). At the University of Maryland, researchers have developed numerous technologies with children as design partners (Druin, 1999b). From digital libraries for children (Druin et al., 2001) to storytelling robots (Druin et al, 1999), to whole rooms that can be interactive storytelling experiences (Alborzi et al., 2000), twice a week after school and two weeks over the summer, children and adults work together to develop new technologies in partnership. As Jack, one 9-year old child design partner explained, “It will be a new millennium and we can change lots of stuff. We want to change stuff over our lives. Grownups need to know what kids are asking for” (Researcher Notes, April 22, 2000). In the case of Alex age 8, he explained adults in this way, “You have to be patient with them, since they only know what adults know. But when we are patient you can learn from adults and they will learn too. We all need to talk together and listen together. Sometimes people have to remember to hear first and then talk” (Researcher Notes, April 22, 2000).
2.0 The KidStory Project
This section will examine the context in which
our research study took place. It will
describe the participants in the research as well as the school system they
came from. Following this, a discussion
of our research activities throughout the three years of journal writing will
be presented.
2.1 Background
The KidStory project
[kidstory.org] was a three-year project funded by the European Union’s i3
Experimental School Environments initiative. Its aim was to work with children
as design partners to create collaborative storytelling technology. One of our
research interests was to understand the extent to which partnership with
children could be possible in a school setting, by inviting complete classes of
children to participate. We worked with the two elementary schools: one in
Nottingham, UK and one in Rågsved just outside of Stockholm, Sweden. It was
evident from the very start of the research that the project worked in two very
diverse environments. While our goals
remained the same in each school, the way in which we achieved these aims
differed due to cultural differences such as teaching methods, class structure
and ideologies concerning assessment.
The focus of this paper is the research we accomplished with the
children and teachers in the elementary school in Sweden.
This Swedish elementary school is situated in a
suburb approximately 10 km south of downtown Stockholm. It is a suburb of Stockholm with a large
immigrant population. 98% of the
housing in consists of low-income rentals and approximately 50% of the students
have a first language other than Swedish. The school was built and opened in
1965. The school consists of 450 students and approximately 45 teachers. The
students are between the ages 6 and 16. The classes for preschool and grade 1-6
consist of mixed age groups. Grades 7 to 9 work in homogeneous age groups. The
school is surrounded by six nursery schools that support approximately 350
children, ages 1 through 5. Although the school and the nursery schools have
different management, administrators actively collaborated within school
projects. The National Swedish Curriculum that these schools followed is very
general and states goals more than procedures. The curriculum for the
elementary school was revised in 1994 and continues to be used today.
Essentially, the goals are formulated as skills and knowledge expected from
students after the 5th and after the 9th (last)
year. Since January 1999 there has also
been a pedagogical curriculum for the nursery school. Compulsory school begins
in Sweden the year the child turns seven. In Sweden, there is only one intake
per year and that happens in August. Traditional grading of all students
(MVG=very well pass, VG=well pass, G=pass, U=fail) does not happen until age 14
(year 8).
Over the three years, our project worked with
two classrooms of children: 14 children who began the project as 5 year olds
and are now 7 years of age, and 13 children who began the project as 7 year
olds and are now 9 years of age. Three teachers were also active participants
in the project research. Researchers
came to the school once every two weeks for a day and the activities were, for
the most part, led by the researchers with the children and teachers
participating.
The focus in regards to technology development
changed over the three years. In the
first year of research, the focus was to refine existing pieces of technology
to support storytelling experiences in the classroom. During the second year,
new and innovative storytelling objects were developed, and the work of the
third year was to integrate the technology from the first two years into a
creative augmented storytelling space or room.
2.2
Methods we used with children
2.2.1 The journal - a way to work, think and learn
At the beginning of the project, the children were
given a journal, a large (30 x 42 cm) black book containing white pages without
lines (see Figure 1). After every
session the children drew and/or wrote their thoughts in the journals. The
younger children were helped to write. The older children discussed what they
had written. The reasons behind using
journals in our research process are similar to why portfolios are used in the
classroom. A portfolio is a “purposeful collection of student work that
exhibits to the student (and others) the students’ efforts, progress, or
achievement in a given area or areas” (Los Angeles County Office of Education,
1997). The use of a portfolio in an educational setting can be used for the
following reasons: to make sense of a child's work; to let others know about a
child's work, and to relate the work to a larger context (Elmin, 1999;
Kostelnik et al., 1999). Researchers have recommended portfolios as a
method for integrating learning and assessment (Quesada, 2000; Schrock,
2000). In addition, research has shown that students can be motivated by
the use of portfolios (Becker & Welch, 2000; Clemmons et al., 1993).
Figure 1: Children’s journals
Within the KidStory Research project, we saw journals
as supporting our work in multiple ways.
From the standpoint of the children, they were able to reflect on their
research activities by collecting their thoughts with crayon and pen drawings,
digital photographs, and at times written words. The content in the journals helped the children to understand not
only what they were thinking, but
also how they were thinking. The journals were also supportive of
self-assessment when children read what they had worked on. The children could
follow their own process. We also saw
many instances when the journals were supportive of language development. Most
of the children in the project were bilingual. The text in the journals was
written in Swedish but were their own thoughts. Like many other educators
(Ashton Warner, 1972; Freire 1977; Leimar
1974) we found this very supportive in developing the children’s reading
skills. The children loved to read their journals for adults and school
friends. We also found that the
teachers and adult researchers in the project used the journals to assess their
teaching and research activities.
In addition to the use of
the journals in the classroom, they were also used in various ways to communicate
the activities of the KidStory research project. From European Union conferences in Barcelona, Sienna and
Helsinki, to end-of-the-year school fairs for parents, the children’s journals
have told the story of our research partnership with children. The journals
were also included in magazine publications discussing the project (e.g., Fast
& Kjellin, 2000)
Figure 2: An example “sandwich”
2.2.2
From
a sandwich to a storytelling room: Project activities over the 3 years
When children act as if they
are inventors, they are learning to invent. This is how we understood Bruner’s
words (1960, p 72), quoted at the beginning of this paper. In our research, we wanted children to feel
as if they were truly inventors. Because these students were young, just 5 and
7 years old, we felt we had to be extremely concrete in our invention
activities. The children needed an understanding of what an inventor was by
working with something very close to their “zone of proximal development”
(Vygotsky, 1962). Therefore, the children began their invention activities by
being asked to invent a new sandwich. With the use of clay and coloured paper,
the children invented fanciful new sandwiches. Beside tomatoes, pepper and
salad there were houses, trees and snails on the top of the sandwich (see
Figure 2). A few weeks later the teachers and the children prepared real
sandwiches with the inventions as models.
To
begin to understand the life of an inventor the children were presented with
information about inventors in the literature. From this, the children were
then asked to invent something that needed to be fixed from their
surroundings. They invented for
example, new spill-proof milk cartons.
To help strengthen the children’s
problem-solving skills (Fields, 1987; Hudson, 1994; Spoor, 1995) they were
presented with a situation where something had to be invented to solve the
problem. There was for example, a problem with “grandfather’s chicken who one
day got so scared of a dog that he jumped up in a tree and there he sat without
being able to get down” (Researcher Notes, March 1999)
The children collaborated to develop a solution and
numerous ideas emerged. These included:
Måns[2]
(age 7): Grandfather takes a rope with a
stone bound at the end. He throws the rope over the branch where the chicken is
and grandfather goes up in the tree and can take the chicken. Grandmother comes
with a ladder. (see Figure 3)
Johan (age 5): A robot takes down the chicken.
Jonas (age 7): You record the sounds of a hen or a rooster.
And then you put the recorder in a cage. You take a long stick and put the cage
close to the chicken and play the sounds. Then hopefully the chicken goes into
the cage.
Figure 3: The solution that Måns
had for bringing down Grandfather’s chicken
During
the second year of our research, new tangible storytelling technologies were
created by our team. What occupied the children during the autumn was inventing
“storytelling machines”. The work started when the children and a teacher
talked about what a story is.
“When can you listen to stories?” There were many suggestions from the
children. One young inventor had an idea; if you had a storytelling machine
perhaps you could “step inside the story or build something which could help
you to travel to the country of stories” (Researcher Notes, September
1999). The children and the adults
started planning for such machines. They began this by sketching their ideas
using simple art supplies (e.g., paper, clay, paste and pipe cleaners) to
create “low-tech prototypes” (see Figure 4).
We call this participatory design and this has become a central method
to our research (Benford et al., 2000; Druin, 1999).
At the same time the children were drawing and writing
about their machines in their journals.
For example, such ideas included:
Rahma (age 8): In our machine there is a magic sofa. If
you sit in the sofa you can travel where ever you want into a story.
Erik, (age 6): We have different flags in our machine. If
you take the flag from Turkey you can listen to a story in Turkish. If you take
the flag from Greece you can listen to the story in Greek.
Henry (age 8 years): We have different sticks in our machine when
pulling them you can listen to different stories. The white stick gives stories
from the past: The blue one is horror stories. The red one is love stories and
the orange one is summer stories. (see Figure 5).
Figure 4: Henry’s example
storytelling machine
One particularly
interesting idea (see Figure 5) came from Fatima’s journal, (age 8):
I have made a story dice.
On the sides there is a forest, a car, Little Red Riding Hood, a cat and
a boat.
The drawings are different stories.
You can throw the dice and there will be a story.
You can change dice with another child and get her dice with her
stories.
Figure 5: Fatima’s story dice
The dice metaphor is an example of a tangible
storytelling object that the technical developers on our team used to create a
true interactive prototype. The dice were 30x30 cm and had a drawing on each
side. On each of these sides was also
an RFTag that was “readable” by an RF reader. With the help of this tag system
the children recorded sounds that went with the story drawing. The technology
model was presented to the children who used and evaluated it.
Johan (age 6): I think the dice was boring it was not
enough sound
Yalda (age 8): I liked the dice very much but I want them
smaller, I would like to have them in my pocket.
During
the third year, a few specific technology inventions from the two earlier years
were integrated into a storytelling room where children could author and
experience stories. The children created a background scenario, characters and
props in digital form (by drawing on a touchscreen or using an ordinary mouse).
It was possible to link sounds to the different story objects. The children
also linked physical objects (whatever they wanted such as soft animals,
drawings etc.) to the virtual objects. When the children told their stories
they used the physical objects together with the virtual objects on the wall
and the sounds. Again children
reflected in their journals on the technology experience.
Jonas (age 9): Johan and I created a story about an elk and
a nesting box. It was very fun. We would like to combine KidPad with the dice.
You can record sounds on the dice and use it together with the pictures we draw
on the wall with KidPad. But I wish I could draw straight lines with KidPad. I
never manage.
3.0
Examples of Design-Centered Learning
In the section that follows, we will define the constructs that emerged
in our research experience. To us these
constructs define, in a sense, the type of learning that occurred, the child’s
belief in whether there was a partnership, and the type of design activities
the child was most able to do.
Following a definition of constructs, examples of these constructs will
be presented. This section will
conclude with the results of our journal analysis.
3.1 Constructs that emerged from our research:
learner, critic, inventor, design partner
In our work with children,
we have found that their roles seemed to change in the project. Thanks to our
qualitative analysis of their journals over the three years, we have seen four
roles emerge from the data as constructs in their development as design
partners: “Learner,” “Critic,” “Inventor,” and “Design Partner.” We define the learner construct as when children show
in their journals that they are absorbing, understanding, and making sense of
the process of invention. Their focus
is in exploring the domain of invention as a classroom exercise. The construct
of critic can be defined as when
children show in their journals that they are recognizing what is good and bad
in inventions around them. They can make suggestions for change in something
that exists. The construct of inventor we define when children show in
their journals that they are suggesting new ideas to be invented that have not
necessarily been thought of in a particular way before. Many times, with this construct, children
have an expectation that the research team can actually invent their new
ideas. And finally, the construct of design partner is when children show in
their journals that they can work with others in the invention process, whether
it be adults or other children, in a collaborative way. We have come to understand that the role of
design partner is a very challenging one for children. Many times they see the
adults in the project as teachers or parents, but not partners in developing
new technologies. Therefore, children
in the project may defer to an adult as opposed to question, elaborate or build
on the other’s ideas. It was our
research interest to see if any of our children could show signs in their
journals of the design partner construct, and if so how many.
We understand that other researchers have analyzed the
work of children’s problem-solving and have developed similar but different
constructs. For example, Killons and
Todnem (1991) divided their students reflective thoughts into three constructs:
“Reflection-on-action,” “Reflection-in-action,” and
“Reflection-for-action.” They defined Reflection-on-action to mean that the
child looks at a work, already done, and considers, “Am I proud of my work?
Did I learn something I didn’t know before?” They defined Reflection-in-action
to mean that the child reflects during the work by asking questions which
include: ”What am I doing? What am I thinking now? Why is it in this way?” That means that the child can change the way
he/she works. They defined Reflecting-for-action to mean that the
child looks at something already done and is thinking of what to bring next to
the work. In some sense, this construct
is most closely suggests our constructs of critic
and perhaps the beginnings of inventor.
In the sections that follow
we will give examples of our findings from the journals, which exemplify the
constructs of leaner, critic, inventor, and design partner.
3.2
Our findings from the journals
3.2.1
Examples from journals that represent each construct
Learner
The best examples we have of the learner construct
come out of the journals in the first year.
During that time, the children may have been inventing sandwiches (see
Figure 3), or ways to save a chicken (see Figure 4), but these experiences were
all for the purpose of learning. They
were not real-world situations, but more fanciful in nature. They were exercises for the children to
learn what inventors do to solve problems.
An important use of the journals in the project has
been to help the children to follow themselves as learners. We do know however,
that reflecting on one’s own learning is difficult and needs scaffolding to
make happen. At the end of our first year of research, the children were asked
in an interview, what they had learned by working in the project. We found that
the youngest children (at that time 6 years old) found it very difficult to
answer this question. Most of them answered, “I don’t know.” The 8 year-old
children answered in more varying ways. Some of them said: “I have learned to
think”. And some of them said that they had learned to invent. Caroline
answered that she had learned to use the computer much more and to speak
English. Those children were not
trained to think about their own learning. What we found was that the journals
could help the children with the reflection process as something to elaborate
on in their reflective discussions.
For example, at the end of our third year, we asked the children again,
what they had learned, this time while again looking through their journals and we received the following responses:
Yalda (age 9): I have learned a lot, of reading, writing
and I’m much better at drawing now. It’s good to have the journal because you
can remember what you have done and you can go on to invent out from old
things. I want to save the journal all my life and show it to my children. I
wish I could show it to my grandmother but she lives in Afganistan.
Eric (age 7): I have learned to be an inventor. The book
is so beautiful. I will think of it when I´ve gone to bed and then I can think
what I can do in the same way at home.
Fatima (age 9): My journal is
like a brain office. There are a lot of small boxes and in all boxes there are
thoughts we have thought about KidStory and I can go there and open the box and
look and I can see what I have learned and I can tell my children when I grow
up.
Critic
In the second and third
years we saw many examples of the critic construct. The children wrote or drew what they thought was good or bad
about a particular technology. With this
construct, children weren’t necessarily solving what was wrong with the
technology, but were expressing their opinion about what could be changed or
what was good about it.
Suaad (age 6): I
think the sofa was very good because when you are sitting there you can listen
to birds who are whistling.
Eric (age 6): The Klump is boring. The Klump is just disappearing, just
disappearing.
Suraya
(age 8): I liked the camera very much
because you could take photos of yourself and put it inside the KidPad program (see
Figure 6).
Figure 6: Suraya’ comments about
the camera she tested when visiting the university researchers
We have
found children in the design process to be quite honest. Sometimes that can mean children’s feedback
can be quite negative and at times extreme. For example, after working with The
Klump, a new software application that enabled children to design
three-dimensional shapes, we asked the children about their thoughts.
Researcher: How was it to work with the Klump
today?
Child: Not so good.
R: Not so good? Why?
C: The arrow. It just
went away. It happened … Many things happened. I want it to work. (Rearcher Notes, October 1999)
We did see that many times the children were
very constructive with their critiquing suggestions. For example:
Researcher: Is there
something you would like to change?
Child: I would like to be able to save things better.
(Rearcher Notes,October 1999)
In the first
few years of the research, a great deal of critiquing was done on some of the
project’s technologies. Thanks to these
criticisms we found 222 suggestions for change, which ranged from wanting more
pre-drawn objects to tell stories with, to wanting more colors and easier ways
to fill that color into spaces, to wanting sound integrated into the software
(Taxen et al., 2001).
Inventor
During the
three years, the children’s journals have been filled with ideas about possible
new inventions (see Figure 7). These inventions involved storytelling, since
that was the goal of the KidStory project, to invent new storytelling
technologies for children. Some
examples from the journals included:
· Children
wanted to be able to move to different places inside the stories with the help
of magic sofas, footsteps, a magic
necklace, magic wand.
· They
wanted to be able to listen to different stories by pulling a stick, by showing different flags, by pressing different buttons, by
opening a story sack.
· They
also wanted to go inside the picture themselves and navigate by leaning to the
right or left or by gestures or sounds.
· The
children also invented human-like machines with ears, mouths, eyes and noses.
Figure 7: An example invention
of “Magic Footsteps” that take you to story places
Design
Partner
The difference between being an inventor and design
partner has to do with the collaborative nature of being a design partner. To
be a design partner is to collaborate and build on each other’s ideas. This is a difficult construct to show in the
journals without knowing the context for the children’s journal ideas. In the example below, Yalda (age 9) reflects
about her design partner experience in her journal after the session of the
day:
It was so fun to create stories today when everyone was allowed to
participate. I feel more happy when everyone participates. I had more fun today
than usual. The dog was very sweet. The group was good. There wasn’t just one
who decided everything.
Another example of the design partner experience came
from a group of 3 children and 2 adults. This team built on all of the
technologies that were invented by the second year of the KidStory project to
develop and present a physical immersive storytelling experience. They called
it Little Brown Riding Hood. Together
the team developed a storyline, selected the technologies that would be needed
to get their story across, and designed the images and recorded the sounds for
the story experience. For example, when a child who was supposed to be Little
Brown Riding Hood, walked over one part of the floor, a forest was projected on
the wall. There was a doormat on the floor and when the girl stepped on it, a
door was projected on the wall with the use of RFTags under the doormat. There
was also a doorbell on the wall and when Little Brown Riding Hood pressed the
doorbell there was a drawing projected that looked like the inside of
grandmother’s house. In their journals children described their design partner
experience with words and pictures.
3.2.2
Children’s changes between constructs
The
children’s journals were analyzed by two researchers who were actively involved
in all three years of the school activities.
The journals were reviewed separately and then discussed in a meeting by
the two researchers. The journals were coded for the four constructs we discussed
in the previous sections of this paper.
These constructs were first developed by doing a preliminary analysis of
the journals. The constructs were then
refined, and used in analyzing the journals to see when clusters of constructs
occurred for each child. Based on the
predominate number and type of constructs at the end of each year, the child
was suggested to be either a learner, critic, inventor, or design partner (See
Figures 9-12). It was not unusual for
example, to see one child’s journal show examples of learner for an extended
period of time, and then gradually show more and more instances of
inventor. It should be noted that the
first year’s journals were found to show only the learner construct (see Figure
9). We believe this came about thanks
to the research study’s need to teach the children what research and invention
was about during that first year.
In our analysis, we
found that out of 27 children, 20 children changed over the course of 3 years,
while 7 did not. Of the 7 that did not
change, only 2 were among the older children and 5 the younger children. Of the children 20 children that did change,
these children displayed an average of 2 constructs over the three years. Overall, we saw in the journals 10 children
change from learner to design partner over the three years. Of those children, 4 began the KidStory
research at age 5 and 6 began at age 7.
Again, the older children when entering the study seemed to show more
change. Interestingly enough, in the
third year the construct our children showed most in their journals after
design partner, was learner, followed closely by inventor. Almost all of the learners were the children
that started at age 5, and almost all of the inventors were the children that
started at age 7, suggesting perhaps that 7 may be a better age to begin this
type of experience than 5. The
construct found the least in the children’s journals was critic, and this was
for the most part similar for both age groups.
What we found most
interesting was the rate of change shown in the children’s journals over the
three years. It was not actually until
the third year that the majority of children reflected something other than
learner in their journals. And in
looking at where the children most clustered, interestingly enough it was
either at learner or design partner, suggesting either children understood this
partnership to be “real” or to be a classroom exercise. We believe that this
may be due to a combination of factors, ranging from the actual research
activities we undertook to the amount of time KidStory researchers who could be
in the school. These factors will be
further explored in the Discussion section that follows.
In summarizing our analysis of the journals, the
figures that follow describe the changes in constructs in the children’s journals.
Figure 9: Children’s Year 1 Constructs Displayed in Journals
Figure 10: Children’s Year 2 Constructs Displayed in Journals
Figure 11: Children’s Year 3 Constructs Displayed in Journals
Figure 12: Comparison of Total Children Over 3 Years with Constructs
4.0
Discussion
In the sections that follow we will discuss the
implications of what we have learned from our research experience with children
as learners, critics, inventors, and design partners. Both the methods we used in the classrooms, as well as the
outcomes we have seen in the journals will be discussed.
4.1
Lessons learned
4.1.1 Teaching/learning
Over the three years
that we used journals in our research, we came to see this method as something
not only helpful to chronicle the research activities, but as a method to help
children develop and structure their thoughts. We have seen the joy that the
children have taken in rereading what they have drawn and written. For example there was Yalda who wished she
could show her journal to her grandmother who lived in Afghanistan. We have
also seen how the use of journals helped the children to create meaning out of
what we had done together. This was
exemplified by Fatima who explained, “My journal is like a brain office.” The journals have also been a help for us,
the researchers, as an instrument for evaluation. We discovered sides of the
children and their learning that we didn’t see during the sessions in the
classroom. There were many times that a whole classroom of children made it
difficult to hear from each and every child in our technology design
partnership. Some of our children were
shyer than others, and with so many bilingual children, it may have been more
difficult for some children to respond to research activities without time for
reflection and at times translation.
While these class sizes were not large by American standards, they were
much larger than traditional research teams, therefore we learned the true
value of the journals in helping us to capture more than we could just being
present in the classroom.
In regards to the analysis
of the children’s journals, we have seen that children can learn from participating
in the process of invention. They may
discover more about the invention process, the technologies themselves, the use
of those inventions for storytelling, and even more about their communication
and collaboration skills. It was
encouraging to see that children can move from learning about the process of
invention to actually contributing to the invention experience. We were concerned that if all of our
children displayed signs in the journals of moving at the same rate, then we
had to assume that the journals were merely a mirror reflection of our research
activities and not a window to a child’s individual learning and change. That was not the case, we saw children
clearly change at different times at different points, and some did not change
at all.
What we did see was that
this process of change needed time to happen.
This may be due to the frequency and amount of time that could be
devoted to work in the schools and the amount of children that were to be a part
of the project with the number of adults.
As a point of comparison, the first author of this paper and her
colleagues at the University of Maryland have done similar research with
children as partners in the invention process.
What they have found is that meeting twice a week with only 8 children
(7-11 years old), each week over the school year, and two weeks during the
summer—the children still do not move from being learners to being design
partners for approximately 6 months (Alborzi et al., 2000). On the other hand, with the resources of
KidStory, researchers met once every other week with four times as many
children, many of whom were younger and spoke Swedish as a second
language. The challenges were much
greater.
Based on this study’s
research results however, we now question whether working with children as
young as five years old is useful for the children or the technology design
partnership. It may be with greater
time and more adult partners, this may be overcome, but further empirical study
is needed to fully explore this issue.
4.1.2 Making new
technologies
From this study, we also learned about the process of making new
technologies. We learned that our
design methods needed to be adapted for the number of children that were to
participate in the invention process. Traditional classroom methods of teaching could not be used. We found that hands-on experiences where the
children were a part of making something were the most successful (and perhaps
more so for our bilingual students). We did find it critical that for the
children to truly believe they were a part of something that was more than a
classroom exercise, that we had to keep revising the technologies based on the
children’s ideas. The more the children
saw the changes/inventions that they suggested in their journals/brainstorming
sessions/technology use sessions, the more the children came to trust us that
they were a critical part of making new technologies.
In regards to the actual
technologies that have been made, much can be said of the technical merit of
this work. Countless research papers,
conference presentations, and successful European Union reviews confirm that
the technical and educational research communities see the importance of what
has been created and how it has been created (Alborzi et al., 2000; Benford et
al., 2000; Fast & Kjellin, 2000; Taxen et al., 2001). We have also
been encouraged by the use of many of our first year technologies. Today those technologies are being used on a
day-to-day basis in Sweden, England, and the United States.
4.1.3 Limitations of the
research
While we see the merit of this current research, we also see that there
are limitations. We know that journals
can only chronicle so much of our research efforts. While we have tried to add to the self-report of the children
with adult researcher reflections and participant observation, our resources
have been limited in what can be captured and analyzed in so large a project.
We believe now that additional video archives could have helped in our
reflection process. We also know that while 27 children is a great many to
follow on a qualitative case study basis, it would be have been helpful to have
been able to compare these children to those of our partners in England. This however was not possible since their
methods differed from ours due to the structure and culture of the
schools. In addition, the number of
children in England that were ultimately involved in all three years of the
project was only a handful, again due to the structures of the school.
Other research studies (Bruner, 1990; Heath, 1983; Wells, 1987)
have shown that the sociocultural environment a child grows up in can also play
a role in if the child feels comfortable being a partner with other children and
adults. We believe that many of our children as recent immigrants to Sweden,
had challenges in this area. Therefore
the results of this study may be limited in how it can relate to other
populations. Also related to this, we wonder if the journal results could have
differed had the children been able to express themselves in their mother
tongue.
4.1.4 Possibilities for the
future
We would like to replicate our research methods with new groups of
children both in Sweden and the United States.
One such project has begun by the first author of this paper in
Maryland, US with the support of a National Science Foundation Career
grant. Children (ages 3-6) are
participating in the development of the classroom of the future. Together children, teachers, and researchers
are partnering to invent new technologies that can support young children in
creative, playful, active learning experiences. We look forward to comparing our results in how children can
change as learners, critics, inventors, and design partners. In addition, we have also begun a study to
further develop these constructs using video archives of design teams with
children. We believe that particularly
the constructs of design partner and inventor could be better exemplified with
the use of video.
In addition to replicating
our methods, we hope to further evaluate the technologies that were created
through the KidStory project. More
empirical studies may help us to understand the value of our research methods
in regards to technology development.
5.0 Acknowledgements
KidStory is funded
under the ESPRIT i3 Experimental School Environments (ESE)
initiative. This research could not
have been accomplished without our colleagues from the Royal Institute of
Technology, Sweden, the University of Nottingham, the Swedish Institute of
Computer Science, and the University of Maryland. We are also grateful to our teacher and child partners in
Nottingham, England and in Rågsved, Sweden.
6.0
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