E-Textiles for Educators: Participatory Simulations With E-Puppetry

• In Event: Textile Messages: Dispatches From the World of E-Textiles and Education

Abstract

1. Objective
Educators and researchers wishing to expand the typical schooling curriculum can make use e-textiles and tools in novel ways. This presentation looks at a first case of e-textile applications in the classroom, called BeeSim, which makes use of computationally enhanced puppets that are used with young children to teach about complex systems in science education. While the case presented here is the first of this line of work, we illustrate how educators can capitalize on these new materials to build innovative experiences for youth that transform the schooling curriculum from one focused on fact-based learning to a more experiential and tactile approach.

2. Perspectives
BeeSim was designed to engage young learners in complexity through physical experiences. Specifically, BeeSim helps students understand the inherent difficulty in finding sources of nectar, and the value of communicating the location of nectar to other bees so that nectar collection can proceed efficiently despite the limited capacity of individual bees to carry nectar to the hive. BeeSim was also designed to help introduce students to key environmental variables such as the fact that a flower may be destroyed or have its nectar consumed while a bee is returning to the hive. Through the use of e-puppetry, e-textiles in this example can help teach about complex systems through a novel approach to participatory simulations as well as introduce computational thinking at an early age.

3. Data sources
We have pilot tested the electronics-based version of BeeSim with first and second grade students as part of a 16 week curriculum unit where the students were learning about honeybees through the BeeSim participatory simulation, computer simulations (Danish, 2009) and traditional classroom activities such as reading, drawing, and play-acting.

4. Findings
We found that the computationally enhanced BeeSim game gives the teacher more freedom and better access to data than in previous incarnations. Furthermore, the studentsʼ interactions were both more natural and more authentic. For example, in previous studies, the honeybeesʼ range had to be monitored by a research assistant with a stop-watch who notified the children that they had to return—something that they often ignored or resisted by looking at “just one more” flower. Because of this, the participants often failed to consider the range to be a real constraint for bees, because it was not a real constraint for them. In contrast, the computational textile bees embedded the beesʼ energy into the game in a natural and familiar manner such that the children in the role of the bees had to attend very carefully to it, or suffer the consequences (lost nectar). This resulted in far more attention to details important to understanding the system.

5. Significance
While the case presented here is the first of this line of work, this presentation discusses how educators can capitalize on these new materials to build novel experiences for youth that transform the schooling curriculum even without asking the students to participate in programming the devices directly.

Authors

• Kylie A. Peppler, Indiana University - Bloomington

• Joshua Adam Danish, Indiana University

• Diane Lynn Glosson, Indiana University