skip to main content
10.1145/3459990.3460727acmconferencesArticle/Chapter ViewAbstractPublication PagesidcConference Proceedingsconference-collections
research-article
Public Access

A Survey of Interface Representations in Visual Programming Language Environments for Children’s Physical Computing Kits

Published: 24 June 2021 Publication History

Abstract

Physical computing toolkits for children expose young minds to the concepts of computing and electronics within a target activity. To this end, these kits usually make use of a custom Visual Programming Language (or VPL) environment that extends past the functionality of simply programming, often also incorporating representations of electronics aspects in the interface. These representations of the electronics function as a scaffold to help the child focus on programming, instead of having to handle both the programming and details of the electronics at the same time. This paper presents a review of existing physical computing toolkits, looking at the What, How, and Where of electronics representations in their VPL interfaces. We then discuss potential research directions for the design of VPL interfaces for physical computing toolkits for children.

References

[1]
Strawbees AB. 2021. Strawbees Code. https://code.strawbees.com/block/
[2]
ROBOTIS AMERICA. 2019. ROBOTIS DREAM How does the program work. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3l_I05xhoGgU
[3]
Julia Anghileri. 2006. Scaffolding practices that enhance mathematics learning. Journal of Mathematics Teacher Education 9, 1 (2006), 33–52.
[4]
Apple. 2021. UBTECH Jimu Robot MeeBot 2.0 App-Enabled Building and Coding STEM Kit. https://www.apple.com/shop/
[5]
Appysmarts. 2019. Simple Drawing robot with Robo Wunderkind (STEM DIY project for kids). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NB6Xb_PjbPc
[6]
Paulo Blikstein. 2013. Digital fabrication and ‘making’in education: The democratization of invention. FabLabs: Of machines, makers and inventors 4, 1 (2013), 1–21.
[7]
Paulo Blikstein. 2013. Gears of our childhood: constructionist toolkits, robotics, and physical computing, past and future. In Proceedings of the 12th international conference on interaction design and children. 173–182.
[8]
Paulo Blikstein 2015. Computationally Enhanced Toolkits for Children: Historical Review and a Framework for Future Design.Found. Trends Hum. Comput. Interact. 9, 1 (2015), 1–68.
[9]
Lautaro Cabrera, John H Maloney, and David Weintrop. 2019. Programs in the palm of your hand: How live programming shapes children’s interactions with physical computing devices. In Proceedings of the 18th ACM International Conference on Interaction Design and Children. 227–236.
[10]
Sharon Lynn Chu, Genna Angello, Michael Saenz, and Francis Quek. 2017. Fun in Making: Understanding the experience of fun and learning through curriculum-based Making in the elementary school classroom. Entertainment Computing 18 (2017), 31–40.
[11]
Playful Invention Company. 2021. Pico Cricket. https://www.playfulinvention.com/picocricket/index.html
[12]
Richard Lee Davis, Chris Proctor, Michelle Friend, and Paulo Blikstein. 2018. Solder and Wire or Needle and Thread: Examining the Effects of Electronic Textile Construction Kits on Girls’ Attitudes Towards Computing and Arts. International Society of the Learning Sciences, Inc.[ISLS].
[13]
Photon Education. 2017. Meet Photon - The world’s first robot that grows with your child!https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nI7ZYbNWFlI
[14]
EF ELECFREAKS. 2021. HoneyComb Queen Kit Electronic Building Blocks. https://www.amazon.com/HoneyComb-Electronic-Educational-Programming-Programmable/dp/B07QWVW4RK?th=1
[15]
Josep Marin Garces. 2018. Roboplus task bioloid humanoid simple program tutorial. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=evAmSv9Qw9g
[16]
Scottie Go!2019. HOW TO PLAY SCOTTIE GO! - INSTRUCTION. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hTAmUJttjU
[17]
Marcos J Gomez, Marco Moresi, and Luciana Benotti. 2019. Text-based programming in elementary school: a comparative study of programming abilities in children with and without block-based experience. In Proceedings of the 2019 ACM Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education. 402–408.
[18]
John Grasel, Wynn Vonnegut, and Zachary Dodds. 2010. Bitwise biology: crossdisciplinary physical computing atop the Arduino. In 2010 AAAI spring symposium series.
[19]
Parallax Inc.2016. The Scribbler 3 Robot. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xCu-Eg3HeE
[20]
Ken Kahn. 1996. ToonTalkTM—an animated programming environment for children. Journal of Visual Languages & Computing 7, 2 (1996), 197–217.
[21]
Eva-Sophie Katterfeldt, David Cuartielles, Daniel Spikol, and Nils Ehrenberg. 2016. Talkoo: A new paradigm for physical computing at school. In Proceedings of the The 15th International Conference on Interaction Design and Children. 512–517.
[22]
Eva-Sophie Katterfeldt, Nadine Dittert, and Heidi Schelhowe. 2015. Designing digital fabrication learning environments for Bildung: Implications from ten years of physical computing workshops. International Journal of Child-Computer Interaction 5 (2015), 3–10.
[23]
DIGITAL DREAM LABS. 2021. Cozmo. https://www.digitaldreamlabs.com/pages/cozmo
[24]
Rong-Hao Liang, Han-Chih Kuo, and Bing-Yu Chen. 2016. GaussRFID: Reinventing physical toys using magnetic RFID development kits. In Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. 4233–4237.
[25]
Modkit LLC.2021. Modkit for Vex. http://www.modkit.com/vex/editor/
[26]
Grasp IO Innovations Pvt. Ltd.2021. Grasp IO. https://www.grasp.io/
[27]
Sze Yee Lye and Joyce Hwee Ling Koh. 2014. Review on teaching and learning of computational thinking through programming: What is next for K-12?Computers in Human Behavior 41 (2014), 51–61.
[28]
John Maloney, Mitchel Resnick, Natalie Rusk, Brian Silverman, and Evelyn Eastmond. 2010. The scratch programming language and environment. ACM Transactions on Computing Education (TOCE) 10, 4 (2010), 1–15.
[29]
Janet Maybin, Neil Mercer, and Barry Stierer. 1992. Scaffolding learning in the classroom. Thinking voices: The work of the national oracy project (1992), 186–195.
[30]
Meeper. 2021. Meeper. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.meepertek.meeperbots&hl=en
[31]
Meeper. 2021. MEEPERBOTS. https://meeperbot.com/pages/meeperbots
[32]
Microsoft. 2018. MakeCode Mindstorms. https://makecode.mindstorms.com/
[33]
Microsoft. 2021. MakeCode Chibitronics. https://makecode.chibitronics.com/editor
[34]
Microsoft. 2021. micro:bit. https://makecode.microbit.org/editor
[35]
Microsoft. 2021. Microsoft MakeCode Arcade. https://arcade.makecode.com/editor
[36]
Node-RED. 2021. Node-RED. https://nodered.org/
[37]
Melanie Pinola. 2014. Wyliodrin Programs the Raspberry Pi with a Drag-and-Drop Interface. https://lifehacker.com/wyliodrin-programs-the-raspberry-pi-with-a-drag-and-dro-1630107933
[38]
Mareen Przybylla and Ralf Romeike. 2014. Physical Computing and Its Scope–Towards a Constructionist Computer Science Curriculum with Physical Computing.Informatics in Education 13, 2 (2014), 241–254.
[39]
Kanjun Qiu, Leah Buechley, Edward Baafi, and Wendy Dubow. 2013. A curriculum for teaching computer science through computational textiles. In Proceedings of the 12th international conference on interaction design and children. 20–27.
[40]
Fanny Riedo, Morgane Chevalier, Stéphane Magnenat, and Francesco Mondada. 2013. Thymio II, a robot that grows wiser with children. In 2013 IEEE Workshop on Advanced Robotics and its Social Impacts. IEEE, 187–193.
[41]
Eric Schweikardt and Mark D Gross. 2006. roBlocks: a robotic construction kit for mathematics and science education. In Proceedings of the 8th international conference on Multimodal interfaces. 72–75.
[42]
Teddy Seyed, Peli de Halleux, Michal Moskal, James Devine, Joe Finney, Steve Hodges, and Thomas Ball. 2019. MakerArcade: Using Gaming and Physical Computing for Playful Making, Learning, and Creativity. In Extended Abstracts of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. 1–6.
[43]
Jiwon Shin, Roland Siegwart, and Stéphane Magnenat. 2014. Visual programming language for Thymio II robot. In Conference on Interaction Design and Children (IDC’14). ETH Zürich.
[44]
Sphero. 2021. Sphero SPRK+. https://www.amazon.com/Sphero-K001RW1-SPRK-App-Enabled-Robot/dp/B01GZ1S7OS?ref_=fsclp_pl_dp_2
[45]
Florence R Sullivan and John Heffernan. 2016. Robotic construction kits as computational manipulatives for learning in the STEM disciplines. Journal of Research on Technology in Education 48, 2 (2016), 105–128.
[46]
SunFounder. 2021. SunFounder PiCar-V Kit V2.0 for Raspberry Pi. https://www.sunfounder.com/products/smart-video-car?gclid=EAIaIQobChMI6KL-hpP_6gIVgo5bCh26zAmyEAQYCiABEgLg9_D_BwE
[47]
Terrapin. 2021. Blue-Bot. https://www.terrapinlogo.com/products/robots/blue/blue-bot-family.html
[48]
Thymio. 2021. Program with VPL. https://www.thymio.org/program/vpl/
[49]
Thymio. 2021. Thymio. https://www.thymio.org/
[50]
Tinkerbots. 2017. Meet My First Robot. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBv_odbrVnU
[51]
Technology Will Save Us. 2017. Mover Kit: get kids moving, building & coding. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/techwillsaveus/mover-kit-the-first-active-wearable-that-kids-make
[52]
David Wood, Jerome S Bruner, and Gail Ross. 1976. The role of tutoring in problem solving. Journal of child psychology and psychiatry 17, 2 (1976), 89–100.
[53]
Wonder Workshop. 2019. Wonder Workshop. https://www.makewonder.com/
[54]
WowWee. 2021. COJI by WowWee. https://wowwee.com/coji
[55]
Junnan Yu and Ricarose Roque. 2018. A survey of computational kits for young children. In Proceedings of the 17th ACM conference on interaction design and children. 289–299.
[56]
Junnan Yu and Ricarose Roque. 2019. A review of computational toys and kits for young children. International Journal of Child-Computer Interaction 21 (2019), 17–36.

Cited By

View all
  • (2024)MakeCode arcade platform for game-based learningComputer Science and Information Systems10.2298/CSIS231111021V21:3(971-988)Online publication date: 2024
  • (2023)Literature Reviews in HCI: A Review of ReviewsProceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3544548.3581332(1-24)Online publication date: 19-Apr-2023

Recommendations

Comments

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM Conferences
IDC '21: Proceedings of the 20th Annual ACM Interaction Design and Children Conference
June 2021
697 pages
ISBN:9781450384520
DOI:10.1145/3459990
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]

Sponsors

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 24 June 2021

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Check for updates

Author Tags

  1. electronics
  2. physical computing kits
  3. robots
  4. visual programming languages for children

Qualifiers

  • Research-article
  • Research
  • Refereed limited

Funding Sources

Conference

IDC '21
Sponsor:
IDC '21: Interaction Design and Children
June 24 - 30, 2021
Athens, Greece

Acceptance Rates

Overall Acceptance Rate 172 of 578 submissions, 30%

Upcoming Conference

IDC '25
Interaction Design and Children
June 23 - 26, 2025
Reykjavik , Iceland

Contributors

Other Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

  • Downloads (Last 12 months)127
  • Downloads (Last 6 weeks)13
Reflects downloads up to 12 Feb 2025

Other Metrics

Citations

Cited By

View all
  • (2024)MakeCode arcade platform for game-based learningComputer Science and Information Systems10.2298/CSIS231111021V21:3(971-988)Online publication date: 2024
  • (2023)Literature Reviews in HCI: A Review of ReviewsProceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3544548.3581332(1-24)Online publication date: 19-Apr-2023

View Options

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

PDF

eReader

View online with eReader.

eReader

HTML Format

View this article in HTML Format.

HTML Format

Login options

Figures

Tables

Media

Share

Share

Share this Publication link

Share on social media