Comments on: Arduino the Cat, Breadboard the mouse and Cutter the Elephant

By: hiumanoia » Archive » Arduino the Cat, Breadboard the Mouse…

hiumanoia » Archive » Arduino the Cat, Breadboard the Mouse… — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 19:04:24 +0000

[...] As part of Seaweed Studio we ran an experimental interaction design/soft toy hacking workshop for 8-11 years old girls. Read more about it here. [...]

By: Wake_Up

Wake_Up — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 15:13:52 +0000

I wonder what it would be like to compare a group of homeschool kids and a group of public school kids. Would their ideas be measurably different? Would the group behave differently?

By: Arduino the Cat, Breadboard the Mouse and Cutter the Elephant : clusterflock

Arduino the Cat, Breadboard the Mouse and Cutter the Elephant : clusterflock — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 15:26:40 +0000

[...] A great piece on children on natural interactive designers. (via Dave Smith’s bookmarks) [...]

By: devious means

devious means — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 00:18:12 +0000

Hi Dan,

Thanks – it’s really interesting to hear that 5 year olds nowadays can do Python!

The problem with the textual interface for younger children it seems was the lack of incentive to investigate it further as it simply looks incomprehensible to them (possibly also because by that stage they’ve just ran out of patience to solve any more problems too..) What did work well was asking them to change values of some of the variables – which allowed them to see very direct effect caused by their editing. We managed to do a lot more in terms of programming with the 10-11 group, who had more patience with exploring what the various bits of code was actually doing.

For the next children’s workshop we would hope to dedicate more time in teaching them about programming and widen their possibilities so we’ll keep you updated on how that goes!

By: Dan S.

Dan S. — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 01:12:53 +0000

This is great! I love the idea of mashing electronics with familiar objects to help with storytelling and creative experimentation.

In your write-up, you surmise that a graphical interface might have helped to give them more control over their projects. Can you say a bit more about how they responded to the textual interface? What worked well, and what didn’t? I realize it was a one-day thing so they probably didn’t plow through the programming language, but I’m wondering how much they manipulated the software during the day.

I don’t doubt that kids could benefit from a graphical software development environment, but the graphical interfaces I’ve seen so far have made me skeptical that they’re much better than textual environments. My 5-year-old girl got further with Python than with Scratch, but that might be a dexterity thing at that age. I don’t have classroom experience on which to base conclusions, so I’m interested in stories from the field.

Thanks very much for posting this! Please report on future experiments.

By: Tim Thompson

Tim Thompson — Wed, 27 May 2009 08:07:18 +0000

This is really fantastic–and thank you for sharing it! I really enjoyed seeing how the girls were able to think the whole project through–concept, selection of resources, programming logic, etc.–and used a variety of skills to make it happen. I loved the comment at the end, when one of the girls noted that is was good to see how toys like these are made.

By: jesse

jesse — Fri, 22 May 2009 16:28:40 +0000

Hi Dan – thanks for your encouraging comments, we really enjoyed running the workshop. Overall I think the reason it worked was that the girls could not pigeonhole the day into ‘boring electronics’ or ‘creative art’ or ‘ICT’ – what they were doing was not easily definable – I think they found that quite freeing. From my point of view it was hard to find a balance between explaining everything and just allowing them to explore the environment without quite knowing what they were doing – I had to really restrain myself from getting too bossy with them!
The girls caught on to the basic concepts very easily and were much less interested in detail than we had anticipated. I suppose because they have a lot of ‘explanation’ type time at school, it was not something they wanted more of on the weekend. Compared to working with adults, they were extremely keen to experiment and were not afraid of breaking things or getting it wrong – so the projects moved along very quickly. Things they really enjoyed were: being able to start and finish the project in one day, using other craft type skills like sewing, thinking about real life scenarios in which to use their projects, not having to understand how the electronics/programming worked. Another thing I noticed was that they were surprisingly patient when things went wrong and didn’t lose focus when we had to struggle with a problem for a while – like finding which wire had come loose, or which bit of code was written incorrectly.
Going forward I think it would be interesting to have a regular group of children working in this way, maybe once a week, to see what would develop once they really got deeply into thinking about this type of work. We’ll let you know the results!.

By: Just Start ‘Em Young « just gabbin’

Just Start ‘Em Young « just gabbin’ — Fri, 15 May 2009 06:53:28 +0000

[...] For a more detailed look at what happened at this ingenious workshop, the instructors posted more photos and explanation here. [...]

By: devious means

devious means — Thu, 14 May 2009 12:38:42 +0000

Thanks I’m glad you like it The kids only vaguely knew it was to do with computers and electronics so I think they kind of expected something more dull and science class like to begin with. I’d say from beginning it’s important to lead them away from thinking about things being ‘too difficult’ for them to achieve. Try not to mix children of different age groups as it adds some unnecessary pressure on the younger ones. Simplify everything and try to relate to what they know already/experienced before! Maybe Jess will have something more to add?

By: dan paluska

dan paluska — Tue, 12 May 2009 20:41:29 +0000

This is super inspiring work. Well done. What would be some of your advice for others thinking about holding workshops with kids? What are the hardest things to convey? Did the students know what they were getting into when they signed up for the workshop?