skip to main content
10.1145/1810543.1810608acmotherconferencesArticle/Chapter ViewAbstractPublication PagesidcConference Proceedingsconference-collections
research-article

Gifts for intertwining with modern nature

Published: 09 June 2010 Publication History

Abstract

Can we design tools and toys that encourage interaction with and intimate knowledge of the every day world? Inspired by Froebel's Gifts, we created a set of meta-manipulatives or "Modern Nature Gifts,"to help people explore their own local environments. Each gift comes out of the box "incomplete" and must be combined with some element of the environment to become meaningful. Like a magnifying glass, they are only interesting when applied to our world. However, the Modern Nature Gifts go one step beyond a magnifying glass because they directly suggest that you build and express yourself using your local landscape. You might see people engaged in activities like jumping up and down to draw a picture, hula-hooping to create music, or exploring a park to find unique sounds for a musical composition. We briefly cover fourrecent works and show how they exemplify Modern Nature Gifts: GlowDoodle, Drawdio, MmmTsss, and Twinkle.

References

[1]
Burgen, Doris. New Technologies in Early Childhood, Partners in Play? In Saracho, O. N. and Spodek, B. Contemporary Perspectives on Science and Technology in Early Childhood Education. 2008.
[2]
Silver, J. S. (2009). Nature as interface: MacGyver'ing and Martha-Stewart'ing interactivity with trees, pencils, grandpa, even the kitchen sink. In Proceeding of the seventh ACM conference on Creativity and cognition (pp. 483--484). Berkeley, California, USA: ACM.
[3]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V38bxZYq5Vg
[4]
http://www.froebelweb.org, retrieved April 29, 2009
[5]
Freire, P. (2000). Pedagogy of the Oppressed (30th ed.). Continuum.
[6]
Tolle, E. (2005). A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose (roughcut.). Dutton Adult.
[7]
Papert, S. & Harel, I. Constructionism. Ablex. (1991)
[8]
Edwards, Carolyn Pope. Three Approaches from Europe: Waldorf, Montessori, and Reggio Emilia. Spring 2002, Volume 4.
[9]
Liedeloff, Jean. The Continuum Concept: In Search of Happiness Lost. Da Capo Press, 1986.
[10]
Piaget, J. (1980). The Constructivist approach. Geneva: Foundation Archives Jean Piaget.
[11]
Silver, J. (2008). Camera for the invisible. In Proceedings of the 7th international conference on Interaction design and children (pp. 173--174). Chicago, Illinois: ACM.
[12]
Rosenbaum, E. (2009). Glowdoodle: a medium for expressive inquiry. In Proceeding of the seventh ACM conference on Creativity and cognition (pp. 469--470). Berkeley, California, USA: ACM.
[13]
Silver, J. S., & Rosenbaum, E. (2010). Twinkle: programming with color. In Proceedings of the fourth international conference on Tangible, embedded, and embodied interaction (pp. 383--384). Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA: ACM.
[14]
http://mmmtsss.com

Cited By

View all
  • (2025)Enhancing child–nature interactions through design: An empirical study of the emotions, perspectives and experiences of nature among South Korea's urban Generation Alpha childrenPeople and Nature10.1002/pan3.70005Online publication date: 17-Feb-2025
  • (2023)Nature and Natural Rhythm in the Digital World - What's in It for Child–Computer Interaction?: A narrative literature review and an initial design frameworkProceedings of the 26th International Academic Mindtrek Conference10.1145/3616961.3616989(119-132)Online publication date: 3-Oct-2023
  • (2023)Engaging with Nature through Technology: A Scoping Review of HCI ResearchProceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3544548.3581534(1-18)Online publication date: 19-Apr-2023
  • Show More Cited By

Recommendations

Comments

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM Other conferences
IDC '10: Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Interaction Design and Children
June 2010
389 pages
ISBN:9781605589510
DOI:10.1145/1810543
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

  • Spanish Ministry of Education and Science

In-Cooperation

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 09 June 2010

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Check for updates

Author Tags

  1. inquiry
  2. maker
  3. manipulatives
  4. nature
  5. phenomenology

Qualifiers

  • Research-article

Conference

IDC '10
Sponsor:

Acceptance Rates

Overall Acceptance Rate 172 of 578 submissions, 30%

Contributors

Other Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

  • Downloads (Last 12 months)33
  • Downloads (Last 6 weeks)6
Reflects downloads up to 17 Feb 2025

Other Metrics

Citations

Cited By

View all
  • (2025)Enhancing child–nature interactions through design: An empirical study of the emotions, perspectives and experiences of nature among South Korea's urban Generation Alpha childrenPeople and Nature10.1002/pan3.70005Online publication date: 17-Feb-2025
  • (2023)Nature and Natural Rhythm in the Digital World - What's in It for Child–Computer Interaction?: A narrative literature review and an initial design frameworkProceedings of the 26th International Academic Mindtrek Conference10.1145/3616961.3616989(119-132)Online publication date: 3-Oct-2023
  • (2023)Engaging with Nature through Technology: A Scoping Review of HCI ResearchProceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3544548.3581534(1-18)Online publication date: 19-Apr-2023
  • (2023)Exploring the Impact of CPS-Based Robot-Assisted Teaching in STEM Education: Enhancing Knowledge, Skills, and AttitudesInternational Journal of Human–Computer Interaction10.1080/10447318.2023.226227840:22(7193-7213)Online publication date: 2-Oct-2023
  • (2020)CCI in the wildProceedings of the Interaction Design and Children Conference10.1145/3392063.3394398(335-348)Online publication date: 21-Jun-2020
  • (2017)Digital Naturalist Design GuidelinesProceedings of the 2017 ACM SIGCHI Conference on Creativity and Cognition10.1145/3059454.3059462(184-196)Online publication date: 22-Jun-2017
  • (2012)Construction of a prototyping support system for painted musical instrumentsProceedings of the 9th international conference on Advances in Computer Entertainment10.1007/978-3-642-34292-9_27(384-397)Online publication date: 3-Nov-2012
  • (2012)Programming Plush Toys as an Introduction to Computer Science: The (Fraught) Question of MotivationUbiquitous and Mobile Learning in the Digital Age10.1007/978-1-4614-3329-3_14(215-226)Online publication date: 9-Nov-2012
  • (2010)Musical boxProceedings of the 9th International Conference on Interaction Design and Children10.1145/1810543.1810595(293-295)Online publication date: 9-Jun-2010

View Options

Login options

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

PDF

eReader

View online with eReader.

eReader

Figures

Tables

Media

Share

Share

Share this Publication link

Share on social media