In this demo we present Strawbies, a real­time tangible programming game designed for children ages 5 to 10. Strawbies is played by constructing physical programs out of wooden tiles in front of an iPad. This interaction is made possible with the use of an Osmo play system that includes a mirror to reflect images in front of the iPad through the front­facing camera. We combi...

With the introduction of the iPad and similar devices, there is a unique opportunity to build tablet-based evolutionary art software for general consumption, and we describe here the i-ELVIRA iPad application for such purposes. To increase the ludic enjoyment users have with i-ELVIRA, we designed a GUI which gives the user a higher level of control and more efficient feedback than usual for des...

The concept “cool”, as it applies to technological products, is discussed in this paper. We offer a model showing how different factors in situated use of techno-cools affect the perception of coolness. The model is discussed using a case of the iPad in educational use. The case is grounded in our experience from four case studies related to introduction of the iPad as a cool educational tool i...

Abstract: Research has shown that wrapping a visit to a museum around a story makes that visit more memorable. Blessing and Skowronek (2013) embedded activities for children at the Glazer Children’s Museum in a story that motivated each activity. We hypothesize that personalizing the story more, by including the child’s first name and other particular information provided by the child, will mak...

The goal of the project was to design an integrated system for the California Academy of Sciences that combined new technology with a social-networking based website to promote educational learning. Five mini-games were developed for the iPad and connected to a series of websites through a database. The use of new technology drew in users that would not have otherwise engaged in the experience....

Touchscreen interactions are increasingly more commonplace with the mainstream adoption of devices like the iPad and iPhone. Kids are using their parents’ devices for entertainment, learning, and discovery, but the interactions have not always been designed with kids in mind. In this paper we discuss the results of our explorations of differences between children and adults on a dataset of touc...