The Evolution of a Tangible for Children's Conversations: Research Questions and Progress

Conversations and discussions in classrooms among children and with teachers are an important part of a learning environment. Social Learning (SL) curricula place special emphases on using conversations as learning tools to teach children positive social norms. Smart tangible objects, briefly, tangibles can help scaffold such conversations by promoting a multimodal experience. The presented PhD research aims at creating such tangibles. The design process is participatory, based on action-research: prototype solutions are rapidly developed; these are used by users and experts of the SL domain in the field, and their usage is reflected over to stir design directions or uncover design possibilities. This DC paper reports on the evolution of tangible prototypes: it shows how new design ideas emerged by moving designers into the field and making users adopt prototype solutions in their environment.