Ideas for the Future - Reflections and Ideas for the Future

8.5 Reflections and Ideas for the Future

8.5.1 Ideas for the Future

This section is dedicated to improvements to the design process, and ideas for future projects.

Replacing the Researcher

As mentioned in Section 7.1.3 I described certain restrictions made early in this project for facilitating the design process for the young participants.

One of these restrictions regarded the type of technology used in this project.

As the one with the technological background, I choose what we were going to use. Which is for better or worse, an aspect of Participatory Design, someone needs to define the project’s restrictions.

reflections and ideas for the future ¹⁰⁵ I would have liked to see both the young and adult participants take a larger role in the design process by also deciding what kind of technology could be used for creating learning environments. This could be facilitated by including time for exploring different kinds of technology in the design process.

App versus Micro Controller

In Chapter 6, I discussed how learning Apps for young children are over-flowing the App marked, and that Norwegian kindergartens are embracing the use of apps. I also discussed how education often lagged behind tech-nology, and certain studies suggest that not all apps for children necessarily accommodate for learning.

Although I can not say if the children have learned from participating in the development process, and by playing with the interactive painting without assessments, it would certainly have been interesting to test what the children learned from this project versus an app with similar content.

If the assessments yielded positive results in favor of the tangible artifact, this could suggest that kindergartens could benefit from integrating other technologies in addition to the standard technology such as apps, tablets and computers one can find in kindergartens today.

Technological Insight to the People

As a consequence of participating in the design process, the adult partici-pants bought similar equipment for continuing the project on their own. It would have been interesting to see the results of these projects, and how the children embraces the technology now that they have previous experience with it and the role as co-designers.

In addition, as our society is becoming increasingly more technological, giving everyone the prerequisites needed to shape and understand the tech-nology that will surround them in their daily lives should not be reserved for the few with technological background. Technological insight should be-long to everyone. And one way to provide this insight to most children may be to integrate technology into the learning environment in kindergarten and primary education.

B I B L I O G R A P H Y

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no/nb/dokumenter/meld-st-6-20122013/id705945/,2012.

[2] Edith Ackermann. Piaget’s constructivism, papert’s constructionism:

What’s the difference. Future of learning group publication,5(3):438,2001.

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meninger/kommentarer/Det-digitale-klasseskillet-7708005.html,2014.

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Lek med engelsk i barnehagen. Kommuneforl.,2013.

[6] Marina Umaschi Bers. Beyond computer literacy: Supporting youth’s positive development through technology. New directions for youth de-velopment,2010(128):13–23,2010.

[7] Clement L Chau.Positive Technological Development for Young Children in the Context of Children’s Mobile Apps. PhD thesis, Tufts University,2014.

[8] Cynthia Chiong and Carly Shuler. Learning: Is there an app for that. In Investigations of young children’s usage and learning with mobile devices and apps. New York: The Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop,2010.

[9] Fragell Cathrine Darre.Creative use of Digital Tools. Kommuneforl.,2013.

[10] Allison Druin. The role of children in the design of new technology.

Behaviour & Information Technology,21(1):1–25, January2002.

[11] Allison Druin, Jason Stewart, David Proft, Ben Bederson, and Jim Hol-lan. KidPad: A Design Collaboration Between Children, Technologists, and Educators. InProceedings of the ACM SIGCHI Conference on Human factors in computing systems, pages463—-470,1997.

[12] James Paul Gee. What video games have to teach us about learning and literacy. Computers in Entertainment,1(1):20, October2003.

[13] James Paul Gee. Situated Language and Learning: A Critique of Traditional Schooling. Psychology Press,2004.

[14] Libby Hanna, Kirsten Risden, and Kirsten Alexander. Guidelines for usability testing with children. interactions,4(5):9–14,1997.

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[22] Shahedul Huq Khandkar. Open coding. University of Calgary, October, 23,2009.

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A

C O N S E N T F O R M

I am a student at Østfold University College, and I am currently writing on my master thesis. The focus of my thesis is to explore how technology can contribute to creating an environment for second language learning in kindergarten. I want to design, develop and implement a prototype together with the children, where the children will have equal roles as design part-ners. During the development, I will film, record audio and take pictures of the sessions and the prototypes created by the children. Further, informa-tion regarding the participants age and gender will also be collected. Infor-mation regarding the child’s name will not be included in the final report.

Images, film, audio recordings and other material will only be used for the thesis, and en eventual presentation of the thesis. It is voluntary to give your consent, ant the consent may at any time be revoked if this is desired by the child’s guardians.

Sincerely

Caroline Sofie Olsen Child’s name:

I/We give our consent to allow our child to participate in the project ———

I/We give our consent that images may be taken of our child ——————

I/We give our consent that audio may be recorded of our child —————–

I/We give our consent that our child’s participation can be filmed ————

——————— —————————————————

Date Parent’s signature

B

T H E T H R E E B I L LY G O A T S G R U F F

Once on a time there were three Billy-goats, who were to go up to the hill-side to make themselves fat, and the name of all three was “Gruff.”

On the way up was a bridge over a burn they had to cross; and under the bridge lived a great ugly Troll, with eyes as big as saucers, and a nose as long as a poker.

So first of all came the youngest billy-goat Gruff to cross the bridge.

“Trip, trap! trip, trap!” went the bridge.

“Who’s that tripping over my bridge?” roared the Troll.

“Oh! it is only I, the tiniest billy-goat Gruff; and I’m going up to the hill-side to make myself fat,” said the billy-goat, with such a small voice.

“Now, I’m coming to gobble you up,” said the Troll.

“Oh, no! pray don’t take me. I’m too little, that I am,” said the billy-goat;

“wait a bit till the second billy-goat Gruff comes, he’s much bigger.”

“Well! be off with you,” said the Troll.

A little while after came the second billy-goat Gruff to cross the bridge.

“Trip, trap! trip, trap! trip, trap!” went the bridge.

“WHO’S THAT tripping over my bridge?” roared the Troll.

“Oh! It’s the second billy-goat Gruff, and I’m going up to the hill-side to make myself fat,” said the billy-goat, who hadn’t such a small voice.

“Now, I’m coming to gobble you up,” said the Troll.

“Oh, no! don’t take me, wait a little till the big billy-goat Gruff comes, he’s much bigger.”

“Very well! be off with you,” said the Troll.

But just then up came the big billy-goat Gruff.

“TRIP, TRAP! TRIP, TRAP! TRIP, TRAP!” went the bridge, for the billy-goat was so heavy that the bridge creaked and groaned under him.

WHO’S THAT tramping over my bridge?” roared the Troll.

“IT’S I! THE BIG BILLY-GOAT GRUFF,” said the billy-goat, who had an ugly hoarse voice of his own.

“Now, I’m coming to gobble you up,” roared the Troll.

“Well, come along! I’ve got two spears, And I’ll poke your eyeballs out at your ears; I’ve got besides two curling-stones, And I’ll crush you to bits, body and bones.”

That was what the big billy-goat said; and so he flew at the Troll and poked his eyes out with his horns, and crushed him to bits, body and bones, and tossed him out into the burn, and after that he went up to the hill-side.

There the billy-goats got so fat they were scarce able to walk home again;

and if the fat hasn’t fallen off them, why they’re still fat; and so:

Snip, snap, snout, This tale’s told out.

C

T H I R D I T E R A T I O N A D U L T B R I E F I N G

third iteration adult briefing

1. In the aspect of language learning, do you think we should focus on using single words, or larger information units in the prototype?

2. Can you describe the kindergartens program for second language learn-ing?

3. Which languages are represented in the group of participants?

4. What are your impression and thoughts on the process?

5. Do you think the technology used in the project could be used in the kindergarten by employees?

D

F O U R T H I T E R A T I O N I N T E R V I E W

d.1 adult participant

1. What are your thoughts on the children’s participation in this project?

How did you see the children’s roles in the process of developing the prototype?

2. Do you think the children think differently about technology after this project after being exposed to different technology than technology they usually meet?

3. Do you see any benefits in regards to language learning in both the process of creating and playing with the prototype?

4. And if we look away from the language aspect, does the children learn other things by being involved in the process, and playing with the prototype? Such as cooperation, creativity?

5. How do you think the children could be motivated to learn languages by interacting with the prototype?

6. What were your impression when seeing the children play with the prototype? Do you think the children had fun using the prototype?

7. Do you think the children benefited from participating in creating a technological solution?

8. Do you think the children can become motivated to learn more after participating in such a process, and after playing with the prototype?

E.g children wanting to learn more words on another language after learning new words through the prototype?

d.2 child participant

1. How did you like participate in the project?

2. Did you feel like you could also decide what we were going to do in this project?

3. How did you feel about using the prototype we made?

4. Did you learn any new words after playing with the prototype?

child participant

5. What did you think about hearing your own language in the proto-type?

6. What did you think about hearing the other children’s languages in the prototype?

7. Why do you think I added more languages in the prototype?

8. Can you think about other ways we could use the technology?

E

B A R E C O N D U C T I V E T O U C H S O U R C E C O D E

/*******************************************************************************

Bare Conductive Touch MP3 player

Touch_MP3.ino - touch triggered MP3 playback

Based on code by Jim Lindblom and plenty of inspiration from the Freescale Semiconductor datasheets and application notes.

Bare Conductive code written by Stefan Dzisiewski-Smith and Peter Krige.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License (CC BY-SA 3.0) http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER

LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

// define LED_BUILTIN for older versions of Arduino

#ifndef LED_BUILTIN

#define LED_BUILTIN 13

#endif

void setup(){

Serial.begin(57600);

pinMode(LED_BUILTIN, OUTPUT);

//while (!Serial) ; {} //uncomment when using the serial monitor Serial.println("Bare Conductive Touch MP3 player");

if(!sd.begin(SD_SEL, SPI_HALF_SPEED)) sd.initErrorHalt();

if(!MPR121.begin(MPR121_ADDR)) Serial.println("error setting up MPR121");

MPR121.setInterruptPin(MPR121_INT);

result = MP3player.begin();

MP3player.setVolume(10,10);

if(result != 0) {

Serial.print("Error code: ");

Serial.print(result);

Serial.println(" when trying to start MP3 player");

}

Serial.println(i-firstPin);

// don't forget to update lastPlayed - without it we don't // have a history

lastPlayed = i;

} } else {

// if we're playing nothing, play the requested track // and update lastplayed

MP3player.playTrack(i-firstPin);

Serial.print("playing track ");

Serial.println(i-firstPin);

lastPlayed = i;

} } }else{

if(MPR121.isNewRelease(i)){

Serial.print("pin ");

Serial.print(i);

Serial.println(" is no longer being touched");

digitalWrite(LED_BUILTIN, LOW);

} } } } } }

F

B A R E C O N D U C T I V E T O U C H E D I T E D S O U R C E C O D E

/*******************************************************************************

Bare Conductive Touch MP3 player

Touch_MP3.ino - touch triggered MP3 playback

Based on code by Jim Lindblom and plenty of inspiration from the Freescale Semiconductor datasheets and application notes.

Bare Conductive code written by Stefan Dzisiewski-Smith and Peter Krige.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License (CC BY-SA 3.0) http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

*******************************************************************************/

#include "Compiler_Errors.h"

#include <MPR121.h>

#include <Wire.h>

#define MPR121_ADDR 0x5C

#define MPR121_INT 4

#include <SPI.h>

#include <SdFat.h>

#include <SdFatUtil.h>

#include <SFEMP3Shield.h>

SFEMP3Shield MP3player;

byte result;

int lastPlayed = 0;

#define firstPin 0

#define lastPin 11 SdFat sd;

SdFile file;

#ifndef LED_BUILTIN

#define LED_BUILTIN 13

#endif

void setup() {

Serial.begin(57600);

pinMode(LED_BUILTIN, OUTPUT);

//while (!Serial) ; {} //uncomment when using the serial monitor Serial.println("Bare Conductive Touch MP3 player");

if (!sd.begin(SD_SEL, SPI_HALF_SPEED)) sd.initErrorHalt();

if (!MPR121.begin(MPR121_ADDR)) Serial.println("error setting up MPR121");

MPR121.setInterruptPin(MPR121_INT);

result = MP3player.begin();

MP3player.setVolume(10, 10);

if (result != 0) {

Serial.print("Error code: ");

Serial.print(result);

Serial.println(" when trying to start MP3 player");

}

else if(i==11){

MP3player.playMP3("TRACK005.mp3");

else if(i==8){

MP3player.playMP3("TRACK008.mp3");

}

else if(i==9){

MP3player.playMP3("TRACK009.mp3");

}

else if(i==10){

MP3player.playMP3("TRACK010.mp3");

}

else if(i==11){

MP3player.playMP3("TRACK011.mp3");

} } } } } } } }

In document Teaching toddlers a second language. Exploring the combination of second language learning and technology (sider 116-140)