A tangible, story-construction process employing spatial, computational-thinking
Proceedings of the the 15th international conference on interaction design …, 2016•dl.acm.org
The outcome of a multidisciplinary and iterative process, CyberPLAYce is a tangible,
interactive, cyber-physical learning tool for children supporting computational thinking and,
particularly, playful storytelling. CyberPLAYce finds inspiration in the concept of child-
computer interaction, where meaning is constructed through spatially reconfiguring the
physical environment. The novel aspect of CyberPLAYce is its extension of cyber-learning to
the dimension of space where children construct meaning at a larger physical scale. This …
interactive, cyber-physical learning tool for children supporting computational thinking and,
particularly, playful storytelling. CyberPLAYce finds inspiration in the concept of child-
computer interaction, where meaning is constructed through spatially reconfiguring the
physical environment. The novel aspect of CyberPLAYce is its extension of cyber-learning to
the dimension of space where children construct meaning at a larger physical scale. This …
The outcome of a multidisciplinary and iterative process, CyberPLAYce is a tangible, interactive, cyber-physical learning tool for children supporting computational thinking and, particularly, playful storytelling. CyberPLAYce finds inspiration in the concept of child-computer interaction, where meaning is constructed through spatially reconfiguring the physical environment. The novel aspect of CyberPLAYce is its extension of cyber-learning to the dimension of space where children construct meaning at a larger physical scale. This paper outlines the motivations for CyberPLAYce, focuses on the full arc of design and evaluation activities concerning computational thinking (CT) practices that engaged 8-12-year-old storytellers, and concludes with a consideration of future work focusing on spatial thinking with CyberPLAYce. Results from our empirical study suggest that cyber-physical play afforded by CyberPLAYce scaffolds computational thinking, creating, and sharing in children. Particularly for IDC researchers in the educational domain, CyberPLAYce represents a Research-through-design exemplar supporting children's enjoyment of learning and meaning-construction.