Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
comfortable with its use. This was clearly visible in the Oriboo, t-words and creative
design workshops where the children at Rudrayanee were much more cautious and
hesitant with the devices they were given than the students at Ullens. Also, their
focus was primarily on the novelty aspects of the devices and exploring their physical
properties and affordances and what they could do with them (which is not surprising
considering most of them had limited exposure to any kind of digital technology).
The students at Ullens moved from the initial curiosity phase (none had ever seen
an Oriboo or a t-words device yet as these are not commercially available) in which
they either explored the shape and functionality of the devices to something more
complex.
In the Oriboo workshop this was illustrated by the kind of games children played.
In the workshop plan, children would play single player games in which the rules
were controlled by the device (Oriboo's in charge of the outcome of the game and
the scores); multiplayer versions of these, in which the children kept count of their
score and competed among them (a socially controlled outcome); multiplayer games
in which the rules are controlled socially but the outcome is controlled by the device
(e.g. a variation of “Dance it” in which a group of children shared one Oriboo, making
a move and passing it to the next player, and then finally Oriboo saying who missed
a movement); or the extension of the latter into a multiplayer competitive game, in
which two groups of children competed to get the highest number of movements right.
Children at Ullens played the whole span of games, whilst children at Rudrayanee
mainly played simple single player games.
In the t-words workshop, the Ullens children were also very successful at taking
full advantage of the t-words interface; they used the boxes to record sounds (e.g. im-
itating animals, recording information about themselves), to record Nepalese songs,
or as a bit box. Some children improvised new instruments by using objects avail-
able in the classroom and the t-words boxes become jam session recording devices.
Children snapped the recorded blocks together and changed their order playing with
their compositions. Besides having fun by exploring the interface the children were
also very interested in the technical functioning, asking to open of one of the t-words
box, which they examined very thoroughly.
This phenomenon was also visible in the Puppets Duets workshop where the
children at Ullens exhibited a greater degree of exuberance in their play with the
puppets than the children at Rudrayanee.
In the Creative Design workshop, the children at Rudrayanee were deeply engaged
with the technologies but needed more time to be able to think about how each might
be used to solve problems. Several of the girls immediately identified the problem
that girls rarely had access to email or the Internet but boys did. In this case, they
were already familiar with the technology, and ideation came more easily. At Ullens,
the children were more able to brainstorm technologically mediated solutions to
problems they identified. However, again most solutions involved more familiar
technologies including web and mobile applications (versus tablet).
However we suspect that although prior exposure to technology has a certain
influence on the actions of the children the different styles of teaching employed by
the two schools had a far greater impact on their behaviour. The Rudrayanee School
