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Ethnography in the kindergarten: examining children's play experiences

Published: 22 April 2006 Publication History

Abstract

This paper describes an ethnographic study completed within a kindergarten environment with the view of gaining insights into the development of new technology for young children. Ethnography within HCI has primarily focused on studies of work practices. This project explored the effectiveness of ethnography in supporting the design of playful technology for a constantly changing, creative, and (sometimes) messy environment. The study was effective in drawing out patterns in observations and as such provides useful suggestions for the development of technology for kindergarten settings.

References

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Blomberg, J. L. Ethnography: aligning field studies of work and system design. Perspectives on HCI: Diverse Approaches, Academic Press: London, 1995.
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Dourish, P. Where the action is: the foundations of embodied interaction. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2001.
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Forman G., and Hill, F. Constructive Play: Applying Piaget in the preschool. Addison-Wesley, Boston, MA, 1981.
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Johnson, J. E., Christie, J. F., and Yawkey, T. D. Play and early childhood development. Scott Foresman, Glenview, IL, 1987.
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Martin, D and Sommerville, I. Patterns of cooperative interaction: Linking ethnomethodology and design. ACM Trans on Computer-Human Interaction 11, 1 (2004), 59--89.
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Montemayor, J., Druin, A., Chipman, G., Farber, A., and Guha, M. L. Tools for Children to Create Physical Interactive Storyrooms. Computers in Entertainment 2, 1 (2004).
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Plowman, L. and Stephen, C. A 'benign addition'? Research on ICT and pre-school children. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning 19, 2 (2003), 149--164.
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Plowman, L. and Stephen, C. Children, play and computers in pre-school education. British Journal of Educational Technology 36, 2 (2005), 145--157.
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Ryokai, K., Marti, S. and Ishii, H. I/O Brush: Drawing with everyday objects as ink. In Proc. CHI 2004, ACM Press.
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Sandberg, A. preschool teachers' conceptions of computers and play. Information Technology in Childhood Annual, (2002), 245--262.
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Sheingold, K. The microcomputer as a symbolic medium. Mirrors of minds: Patterns of experience in educational computing (pp 198--208). Ablex Publishing Corporation, Norwood, NJ, 1987.
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    cover image ACM Conferences
    CHI '06: Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
    April 2006
    1353 pages
    ISBN:1595933727
    DOI:10.1145/1124772
    Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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    Published: 22 April 2006

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    Author Tags

    1. children
    2. educational technology
    3. ethnography
    4. kindergarten education

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    CHI06: CHI 2006 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
    April 22 - 27, 2006
    Québec, Montréal, Canada

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    Cited By

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    • (2024)Children's Acceptance of a Domestic Social Robot: How It Evolves over TimeACM Transactions on Human-Robot Interaction10.1145/363806613:2(1-20)Online publication date: 14-Jun-2024
    • (2024)Opportunity Spaces for Children ́s Informal Learning in Public EnvironmentsProceedings of the Eighteenth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction10.1145/3623509.3634897(1-5)Online publication date: 11-Feb-2024
    • (2020)Flying LEGO BricksProceedings of the Fourteenth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction10.1145/3374920.3374948(193-205)Online publication date: 9-Feb-2020
    • (2019)Understanding Children's Free Play in Primary SchoolsProceedings of the 9th International Conference on Communities & Technologies - Transforming Communities10.1145/3328320.3328384(178-188)Online publication date: 3-Jun-2019
    • (2017)EthnographyResearch Methods in Human Computer Interaction10.1016/B978-0-12-805390-4.00009-1(229-261)Online publication date: 2017
    • (2015)Value Sensitive Design: Applications, Adaptations, and CritiquesHandbook of Ethics, Values, and Technological Design10.1007/978-94-007-6970-0_3(11-40)Online publication date: 8-May-2015
    • (2014)Paradigms of games research in HCIProceedings of the first ACM SIGCHI annual symposium on Computer-human interaction in play10.1145/2658537.2658708(27-36)Online publication date: 19-Oct-2014
    • (2014)Value Sensitive Design: Applications, Adaptations, and CritiquesHandbook of Ethics, Values, and Technological Design10.1007/978-94-007-6994-6_3-1(1-26)Online publication date: 7-Apr-2014
    • (2013)Designing healthcare games and applications for toddlersProceedings of the 12th International Conference on Interaction Design and Children10.1145/2485760.2485770(137-146)Online publication date: 24-Jun-2013
    • (2013)CuboinoCHI '13 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/2468356.2479578(2935-2938)Online publication date: 27-Apr-2013
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