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A tangible construction kit for exploring graph theory

Published: 16 February 2009 Publication History

Abstract

Graphs are a versatile representation of many systems in computer science, the social sciences, and mathematics, but graph theory is not taught in schools. We present our work on Graphmaster, a computationally enhanced construction kit that enables children to build graphs of their own and investigate their properties by experimenting with algorithms that operate on them. The system is distributed; microcontrollers inside each node execute an interpreted language in parallel. Graphmaster, with its magnetic connectors, illuminated edges, and capacitive sensing, encourages children to develop intuitions about connectivity long before they are introduced to the notation and formulas of graph theory.

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Cited By

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  • (2022)A Meta-Analysis of Tangible Learning Studies from the TEI ConferenceProceedings of the Sixteenth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction10.1145/3490149.3501313(1-17)Online publication date: 13-Feb-2022
  • (2018)LETSmathProceedings of the 20th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services Adjunct10.1145/3236112.3236157(313-320)Online publication date: 3-Sep-2018

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Published In

cover image ACM Other conferences
TEI '09: Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Tangible and Embedded Interaction
February 2009
407 pages
ISBN:9781605584935
DOI:10.1145/1517664
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

Sponsors

  • Microsoft Research (USA)
  • Microsoft Research Cambridge (UK)
  • Nokia (Finland)
  • Microsoft Hardware (USA)

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 16 February 2009

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Author Tags

  1. education
  2. games
  3. graphs
  4. tangible
  5. toys

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  • Research-article

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TEI09
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Overall Acceptance Rate 393 of 1,367 submissions, 29%

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Cited By

View all
  • (2022)A Meta-Analysis of Tangible Learning Studies from the TEI ConferenceProceedings of the Sixteenth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction10.1145/3490149.3501313(1-17)Online publication date: 13-Feb-2022
  • (2018)LETSmathProceedings of the 20th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services Adjunct10.1145/3236112.3236157(313-320)Online publication date: 3-Sep-2018

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