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Extending tangible interfaces for education: digital montessori-inspired manipulatives

Published: 02 April 2005 Publication History

Abstract

This paper introduces a new framework for thinking about tangible interfaces in education, with specific focus on abstract problem domains.Manipulatives are physical objects specifically designed to foster learning. We offer a new classification of Manipulatives: "Froebel-inspired Manipulatives" (FiMs) and "Montessori-inspired Manipulatives" (MiMs). We argue that FiMs are design materials, fostering modeling of real-world structures, while MiMs foster modeling of more abstract structures. We show that our classification extends to computationally enhanced versions of manipulatives.We present Digital MiMs - computationally enhanced building blocks. We describe two prototypical members of the Digital MiMs class: FlowBlocks and SystemBlocks, physical, modular interactive systems that serve as general-purpose modeling and simulation tools for dynamic behavior. We present findings from qualitative studies, and conclude that digital MiMs are accessible to young children, engaging, and encourage learning of abstract structures of dynamic behavior through an iterative process of hands-on modeling, simulating, and analogizing.

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    cover image ACM Conferences
    CHI '05: Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
    April 2005
    928 pages
    ISBN:1581139985
    DOI:10.1145/1054972
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    Published: 02 April 2005

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    Author Tags

    1. TUI
    2. digital manipulatives
    3. education
    4. simulation
    5. toys

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