Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
concept and companion sheets either allow setting supplementary parameters or to
visualize general simulation output (summarized numbers, graphs, etc).
The TinkerLamp is used on a regular basis in four different classes in two Swiss
schools. Teachers are enthusiastic and describe it as an environment that “works
well.” More formal evaluation has shown the positive effects of the tangibles on
learning (Schneider, Jermann, Zufferey, & Dillenbourg, submitted), but the usability
of TinkerSheets has not been empirically proved.
Design Factors
The TinkerSheets offer interesting opportunities with respect to our 14 factors. First,
they make curriculum relevance (factor 11) very tangible. The official curriculum—
jointly designed by public authorities and the relevant corporate association—has
the form of a large binder. Teachers may simply take one sheet from this binder and
place it under the TinkerLamp in order to set up the activities described in the sheet.
In addition, teachers may annotate these sheets with personal comments (e.g. which
simulation parameters work better for this activity) that will be very useful for the
next year reuse of this activity (factor 14: sustainability).
These sheets can also be used for designing homework (factor 4: Integration), for
instance by printing a warehouse performance sheet at the end of a warehouse design
activity. Teachers may then ask apprentices to perform some analysis at home and
to come back for the next week with new simulation parameters. Their homework
could typically be assessed by putting the homework sheet under the TinkerLamp
and see how the warehouse performs.
What is interesting here is that continuity across activities (factor 5) becomes
tangible: what connects successive activities is not an invisible workflow, but a con-
crete sheet of paper that is passed from hand to hand between the different phases
of the activity. This “tangible workflow” has advantages: it is simple and concrete,
publicly visible, documents can be annotated, shown to echo other, etc. Actually,
the virtual workflow still exists since any sheet is associated to a fiducial marker
that connects it to a data structure, but this invisible data set has a concrete clone in
the physical world.
The physical orchestration (factor 9) of the activities was initially not trivial.
Controlling the simulation required teachers to use finger-driven menus that were
not easy to use. This difficulty did not empower teachers as drivers (factor 1). We
replaced these menus by TinkerSheets that have a much better usability. Once they
are laid out around the display area, they constitute some kind of cockpit in which it
is relatively easy to see all available options. Initially, we used a very large version
of the TinkerLamp (the TinkerTable, 1.5
2m
2
), which occupied a large space for
only five students. What would then happen with the students who are not working
(factor 3: control)? Working with a subset of the class is acceptable for one exper-
iment but not sustainable on the long term (factor 14). One teacher came with an
innovative idea: while one team was working on the table, he projected their work
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