Physical computing with plug-and-play toolkits:Key recommendations for collaborative learning implementations

Abstract

Physical computing toolkits have long been used in educational contexts to learn about computational concepts by engaging in the making of interactive projects. This paper presents a comprehensive toolkit that can help educators teach programming with an emphasis on collaboration, and provides suggestions for its effective pedagogical implementation. The toolkit comprises the Talkoo kit with physical computing plug-and-play modules and a visual programming environment. The key suggestions are inspired by the results of the evaluation studies which show that children (aged 14 to 18 in a sample group of 34 students) are well motivated when working with the toolkit but lack confidence in the kit's support for collaborative learning. If the intention is to move beyond tools and code in computer education to community and context, thus encouraging computational participation, collaboration should be considered as a key aspect of physical computing activities. Our approach expands the field of programming with physical computing for teenage children with a focus on empowering teachers and students with not only a kit but also its appropriate classroom implementation for collaborative learning.

Interaction Order and Historical Body Shaping Children’s Making Projects—A Literature Review

“…Interestingly, older and younger children were able to maintain a friendly competition as well [72]. The tendency of children in collaboratively making decisions [49], discussing and negotiating [21,37,45,49,70,72], sharing ideas [4,14,15,21,[25][26][27]30,39,42,[45][46][47][70][71][72]74], creating a shared understanding of the problem [2,49] and shaping groups [22][23][24]45] reveals important beneficial aspects of their collaborative engagements. Successfully overcoming the challenge of equal sharing of all the responsibilities is also reported among children having high Making literacy in hands [21].…”

“…Although it was motivating for them, they were not successful in having a good collaboration compared to the university students. Authors suggest that in addition to toolkits, there are some other influencing factors such as physical arrangements, group size and assistance from adults as that need to be taken into consideration [39].…”

“…Facilitation style. (1) facilitator balanced scaffolding with openness (leaving room for open exploration in a way that children do not feel lost) [27], avoided from adopting the manner of a typical teacher [39], listened to children actively, helped children in developing their voice by understanding their background, engaged children in conversations and reflecting, triggered ideas by sharing their creative process [27], divided children into groups [38], avoided providing children with specific didactic guidance during ideation sessions [39], reviewed children's plans and guiding them [7], probed into the process by asking questions [7,40], and one study highlights the importance of expanding the network of facilitators, in order to connect with local mentors, and eventually to connect those mentors to the children [75], (2) youth mentors should act as agents who play active roles in both designing and leading activities [41] and children mentors avoided teaching directly [10], (3) instructors let children experiencing using the machines in the Fab Lab by themselves and helped them if needed [30], treated "activities as objectives for the students to achieve learning targets", assisted children when they asked for help and led the workshops' introductions [74], (4) mediators also contributed in providing emotional supports by managing in gaining trust of the children [38], youth workers acted in somewhat similar roles as proxies, mediating between children and researchers [38], and (5) helpers let children having full independency as far as possible [23], helped with logistics and also with the management of the classroom [37], looked at children's works [37], and were audience while children were presenting their products to them [20].…”

“…The existing literature has already acknowledged that multiple stakeholders are involved in children's Making activities and the intergenerational aspects of making (see for example, [33][34][35]). The importance of teachers [3,7,9,14,16,17,20,24,36,37], facilitators [7,24,26,27,[38][39][40], mentors [5,9,10,26,41], and peers as influencing (helping or hindering) children's Making activities has already been pointed out in the literature. Likewise, studies have already indicated that children's skills, knowledge, and experiences may be highly significant in shaping how children engage in or are discouraged from Making activities [2,3,5,7,8,10,[13][14][15]17,20,21,24,26,27,30,35,36,40,[42][43]…”

Experiences from Using Gamification and IoT-Based Educational Tools in High Schools Towards Energy Savings

“…Along this direction, Gianni et al [13] report on the usage of a toolkit [17] for rapid IoT application prototyping with a group of high school students. Analogously, [16] proposed the application in schools of a plug-and-play toolkit together with some suggestions for successful implementation of activities in high schools. An educational framework leveraging ubiquitous, mobile and Internet of Things technology for science learning in high schools has been proposed within the UMI-Sci-Ed project, while also investigating students' stance on IoT-enabled education activities [14].…”