Research Issues in Creative

Computing

Letizia Jaccheri

letiziajaccheri.org

2

space

bodycomputer

3

The way I see it – Electroboutique 2010

4

Sonic Onyx – an interactive sound installation in a school playground 2007

5

Trå for vann – Experts in team project 2012

6

Komputer + Kunst = Kjærlighet

• https://kodeloypa.wordpress.com/

• Project Initiator for Our Toys project Creative play with

information technology, partially supported by

IME/NTNU, Remida/Trondheim Municipality.

Descriptions and main activities in the following years:

– 2013

– 2012 https://vimeo.com/68322450 by A. Eriksen

– 2010 https://vimeo.com/19031469

• 2009 Project Initiator and Responsible for Komputer +

Kunst = Kjærlighet 2009, partially supported by Norsk

Forskningsråd PROREAL

7

ICEC 2015 Trondheim 30 Sep – 2 October

• International Conference on Entertainment Computing

• http://ICEC2015.info

• Floyd Mueller keynote on Exergames

• http://exertiongameslab.org/

8

The Field Studies (creative

workshops)

* In all workshops observations, photos and short videos were employed

WS#

# of Participants

Age (years)

Main Data Collection*

1st 15 12 Semi-structured Interviews (on6 students)

2nd 14 12 Semi-structured Interviews (on5 students)

3rd 12 12 Surveys4th 10 12 Surveys5th 15 17 Surveys6th 12 DHH

Children11-12 Interviews with 6 experts after

the workshop

Context

• Code your own Game – felicitous, creative and

collaborative environments to facilitate learning, with particular focus on programming. Todays technologies not only allow a more active, physical engagement, but also provide the opportunity for novel and collaborative interactions.

• Deaf and Hard of Hearing (DHH) children

10

Code your own game

• Researchers and artists design and implement two workshop programs - Reggio Emilia philosophy of creative reuse and the open-source software Scratch

• Empirical evaluation of a total of 66 pupils

• The results show that – software and hardware

intensive activities raise awareness of technology

– intensify the experience

– invite students to explore boundaries and increase collaboration and the exchange of views and ideas.

The Physical Phase

• Children’s worked at ReMida centers according to Reggio Emilia education principles. The main idea is that the initiative for creative actions should spring from the child himself/herself. ReMida centers are creative places with a lot of appealing objects where students start to work without being activated by adults.

The Interactive artifacts

• Children’s worked in teams (dyads or pentads) and completed and, published in total six interactive works and eleven installations (see example, figures) based on the software/hardware and the recycling materials of the center. Record of the children’s activities was kept through photographs, surveys, interviews and observation reports.

Connecting the Physical with the Digital

through Programming

Children engaged in programming languages (i.e., Scratch) and programmable hardware platforms (i.e., Arduino), which enable them to engage in the world of creativity with digital enriched artifacts, like robots and interactive installations

14

Participants

• Norwegian Deaf Museum

Curator

• Norwegian Deaf Museum

Director of Education

• Trondheim Deaf School

teacher

• Trondheim Deaf School

teacher

• Artist Programmer

• HCI researcher

Data Collection

• Survey– the six experts were asked to rate, on a 7-

point scale survey

• The child seemed to enjoy programming during the workshop (Enj1)

• The child seemed interested in actively exploring programming in the workshop (Enj2)

• The child seemed entertained by the workshop in general (Enj3)

• The child was able to follow the tasks of the workshop (Cont1)

• The child has the skills and the ability to follow the tasks of the workshop (Cont2)

• The workshop was easy for the child (Easy1)

• The workshop was flexible for the child (Easy2)

• The concept of the workshop was clear and understandable from the child (Easy3)

• Fokus group – with experts; and afterwards, by

employing content analysis, a revised set of guidelines was obtained

– 1. approach; 2) settings; 3) means

16

Approach

• Follow children learning– Instructor should wait the interpreter

to finish, give enough time to children to read information and repeat when children do not follow the instructions (as many times as needed).

• Use personal approach

– The instructor should treat every child uniquely, and consider his/her individual difficulties. The instructor should keep eye contact with all the children to ensure that they are following him.

• Provide practical information

– Reduce the amount of the provided information, by focusing to the practical information. Support the recall of communication patterns rather than building new ones and provide few but distinct choices to the child.

Settings

• Different sessions with clear goals

– The activity should be well-structured with different and clear (IT-programming) competencies on each session and many breaks between the sessions.

• Very well prepared interpreters

– Interpreters and instructors need

to work together in advance, in

order to reduce potential

difficulties in communication and

the vocabulary (sign language

vocabulary is limited). Interpreters

need to have some knowledge in

the field (e.g., programming).

Means

• Many, clear and big visual aids– Big screens, projectors and other

visual aids are essential on assisting children communication. Text should have clear large headings, and different notions should be distinguished with different colors and shapes.

• Support children-computer interaction via visual tools

– Children-computer (program) interaction should be supported with various visual means. For instance children-program interaction through the web-camera motivates them to optimize their code.

19

Limitations

• absence of children’s voices in this work

20

References

• Giannakos, Michail N., and Letizia Jaccheri. "An EnrichedArtifacts Activity for Supporting Creative Learning: Perspectives for Children with Impairments."Entertainment Computing–ICEC 2013. Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2013. 160-163.

• Giannakos, Michail N., and Letizia Jaccheri. "Designing creative activities for children: the importance of collaboration and the threat of losing control."Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Interaction Design and Children. ACM, 2013.

• Giannakos, Michail N., and Letizia Jaccheri. "What motivates children to become creators of digital enriched artifacts?." Proceedings of the 9th ACM Conference on Creativity & Cognition. ACM, 2013.

21

Conclusions

• Thanks to Audun Eriksen, Pål Bøyesen, Kai Torgeir

Dragland (pictures), Michail Giannakos