Computation and Construction Kits: Toward the Next Generation of Tangible Building Media for Children

Construction kits represent a venerable, creative, and (occasionally) even beautiful genre of educational toys for children. Nonetheless, traditional construction kits have limitations as educational media. In the past decade, a number of research efforts have attempted to address these limitations by augmenting construction kit design with various types of computational media. This paper describes two new prototypes of "computationally-enhanced construction kits"; unlike previous efforts, these newer kits allow for large numbers of mutually-interacting, computationally complex, geometrically innovative, and user-programmable pieces. We describe the current (stillearly) state of these systems, and discuss plausible directions for future development and research. Keywords Construction kits, educational technology, embedded computing.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2004
• Where: IADIS
• Authors: Michael Eisenberg, Leah Buechley, Nwanua Elumeze
• Keywords: Computationally-enhanced Construction Kits, Construction Kits, IADIS 2004, IADIS 2008, Traditional Construction Kits