Amon Millner Phd Thesis Proposal
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Computer as Chalk: Children Designing Interactive Experiences by Programming Connections between Digital and Physical Media for Expressive Community Building Amon Millner Thesis Proposal for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Media Arts and Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology 2009.08.18 Thesis Advisor Mitchel Resnick LEGO Papert Professor of Learning Research MIT Media Laboratory Thesis Reader Leah Buechley Assistant Professor MIT Media Laboratory Thesis Reader Melvin King Senior Lecturer Emeritus MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning 1 Abstract This thesis explores how chalk can serve as a model for how people can harness the expressive power of computers. Chalk is well-known for being central to creative activities such as making sidewalk art or sketching personalized hopscotch grids. A goal of my work is to support children from a diversity of backgrounds to use computers for creatively expressing themselves, similarly to how they use chalk. I am motivated to do this work for reasons George Washington Carver explains: "new developments are the products of a creative mind, so we must therefore stimulate and encourage that type of mind in every way possible." At the core of this study is the Hook-ups System, a set of technologies and activities that I designed to enable young people to create interactive experiences by programming connections between physical and digital media. With the Hook-ups System, young people integrate sensors with a myriad of materials to create their own tangible interfaces. These interfaces control digital images and sounds based on computer programs the young people write to make projects such as games or responsive art pieces. For example, I describe how a 10-year-old created a paper-plate-based flying saucer, added a sensor, then wrote a program to control an animation of a flying saucer on her computer screen. To understand how the Hook-ups System is meeting the study's goals, I ask four research questions: - Engaging: To what degree does the Hook-ups System appeal to and engage broad groups of children who vary in culture, interests, and extracurricular activities within an informal learning environment? - Evocative: How well does the System support children creating and sharing projects that express parts of their personalities, passions or positions on social issues? - Transformative: To what degree does the System transform a child’s skill set, design strategies, knowledge of computing, and attitude? - Transmedial: How well does the System suggest design processes that seamlessly integrate working with both physical and digital media? I present my plan for continuing Hook-ups research in two after-school technology centers. My proposal describes my plans to build three case studies from data I collect according to a design experiment framework. I discuss methods for validating the data that will inform my case studies. I conclude with expected contributions. 2 Extended Abstract The ways in which people use chalk can serve as a powerful model for rethinking how people can harness the expressive power of computers. Since well before computers were invented, chalk has helped people express their ideas creatively from podiums to playgrounds. Today’s computing devices have the potential to enhance expressive activities in similar ways that chalk does, but too many children have yet to realize that potential. For children, chalk has the following attributes: (1) convenient for delivering classroom lessons; (2) enjoyable when used for well-established games; (3) adept at engaging both social and physical body involvement in creative processes; (4) capable of evoking self-expression during creative processes; (5) instrumental to activities that help children transform their thinking and environments; and (6) usable with a multiple forms of media. Currently, too many young people associate computers with classroom lessons and games and not so much with moving their bodies, expressing themselves, transforming their thinking, or exploring different forms of media. Stronger associations between computers and more of chalk's attributes would help children realize the capacity of computing to support creating and fostering new ways of thinking. Children actively express themselves and change their environments using sidewalk chalk before they passively follow lessons on chalkboards in schools. My research aims to empower children from a diversity of backgrounds to create with computers in a similar way to how they would with chalk so that they view computers as tools with which they can actively engage with their environments. The need to broaden participation in creative uses of computing motivates my work. George Washington Carver underscored the urgency of enlisting young people in creative endeavors: “new developments are the products of a creative mind, so we must therefore stimulate and encourage that type of mind in every way possible” (Kremer, 1991). At the core of this study is the Hook-ups System, a set of technologies and activities that I designed to enable young people to create interactive experiences by programming connections between physical and digital media. With the Hook-ups System, young people integrate sensors with a myriad of materials to create their own tangible interfaces. These interfaces control digital images and sounds based on programs the young people write to make projects such as games or responsive art pieces. For example, I describe how a 10-year-old created a paper-plate-based flying saucer, added a sensor, then wrote a program to control an animation of a flying saucer on her computer screen. I designed the Hook-ups System with three key theories of learning in mind. The first is constructionism – an approach to education emphasizing that children learn best when actively engaged in creating a public entity (Papert, 1980). The second is the theory of situated learning – a model suggesting that learning happens in the community and environment in which it is applied (Lave & Wenger, 1991). The third is the notion of zones of proximal development – the difference between what a person can learn with the help of someone or something else and what they could on their own (Wertsch & Stone, 1985). 3 I explain how my work relates to research projects that can be described as physical computing kits: collections of languages, devices, electronic components, and physical materials useful for constructing objects with behaviors. I contrast the Hook-ups System's approach with several kits that are capable of constructing tangible interfaces to computer programs such as LEGO WeDo, d.tools, Phidgets, and NETLab Tools. I describe how I've designed the Hook-ups System to engage children in programming connections between physical and digital media. The process starts with youth combining physical materials with hand-made or manufactured sensors - components that react to changes in the physical environment such as sound or light levels. They then make the creations become "Hook-ups" by connecting the sensors to a sensing device that plugs into a computer running a programming environment called Scratch. With the Hook-up, they control Scratch projects – making digital media react to the sensing device's updates about the physical world. The sensing device at the heart of a Hook-up is a Scratch Sensor Board. I center my research around four research questions – each concerning a dimension of chalk. My questions are: • Engaging: To what degree does the Hook-ups System appeal to and engage broad groups of children who vary in culture, interests, and extracurricular activities within an informal learning environment? • Evocative: How well does the System support children creating and sharing projects that express parts of their personalities, passions or positions on social issues? • Transformative: To what degree does the System transform a child’s skill set, design strategies, knowledge of computing, and attitude? • Transmedial: How well does the System suggest design processes that seamlessly integrate working with both physical and digital media? I carry out my research to explore these questions based primarily on a design experiment (DE) framework. It advocates engineering and re-engineering innovative learning environments situated within complex learning environments in ways that highlight how technologies and practice innovations influence the participants (Brown, 1992). I adapt the DE model to less-formal educational spaces that feature newly-developed technologies – such as the virtual sensor board that I will be developing to explore how my work connecting Scratch to the physical world can dovetail with the growing Scratch online community. I conduct my research in two after-school technology centers with which I have had a five-year relationship: the Charlestown Computer Clubhouse and the South End Technology Center. My study extends Hook-ups research I have conducted at those two sites in the past. I will introduce my current System to the South End Technology Center, collect and analyze data relating to how participants adopt the System, refine the System based on my analyses, and introduce it to the Charlestown Clubhouse – where I'll also collect data and refine the System accordingly. 4 I will collect data in each research site from a variety of sources including field notes, material archives, survey and interview results, and audio/video recordings. I will annotate and code the data I collect in order to triangulate findings across data streams. I will draw accounts from these qualitative data streams to present three cases, each focusing on a particular unit of analysis: • case 1- the design and deployment process of the Hook-ups System. • case 2 - individuals inventing with the Hook-ups System. • case 3 - small groups collaborating on Hook-ups projects. In writing up each case, I will present the accounts of events, artifacts, and experiences that explore how the Hook-ups System was: engaging, evocative, transformative, and/or transmedial. I will incorporate the transcript excerpts of Hook-ups creators in my thesis write-up. My research will be a reflective practice.