1. Mobile Collaboration for Young Children
Jerry Alan Fails
Ph.D. Candidate in Computer Science
Start with context, move to some definitions and examples, define the problem and questions, discuss the

2. Children are mobile!!! Why Mobile? Inside the house
Where have you been?

3. Mobile Collaboration Young Children
Availability
Bridges physical and traditional computing
Ability to create in context
Important for social and cognitive development
Can support constructionism
Expanded user interface
Young Children
Increasing population
Increasing usage of mobile devices
Personal expertise

4. To work together, especially in a joint intellectual effort.
Mobile
Collaboration
To work together, especially in a joint intellectual effort. (
Spatial
Co-located
Distributed
Temporal
Synchronous
Same Place & Time
Different Place,
Same Time
Asynchronous
Same Place,
Different Time
Different Place & Time
Young Children
Ages 6-10

5. Move Beyond … Devices for consumption/entertainment/collection
To make mobile devices more:
Collaborative
Child-appropriate
Creative, generative, constructive
Kidsteam
Cooperative Inquiry (Druin, CHI 1999; Guha et al., IDC 2004)
Limited range of interactions - None, Play-acting along with, Communicating, Collecting data, filling-in forms, educational “drill and kill”, gaming, collaborating (very few)

6. Formative Research Physical vs. virtual (Fails et al., IDC 2005)
→ Mobile devices could bridge the divide
Tangible Flags (Chipman et al., IDC 2006)
→ Collaboration, organizing collections
Collections
Kids collect but do not (want to) organize
→ Implicit organization via narratives
Mobile Stories (Fails, IDC 2007)
Design sessions with Kidsteam
Fort McHenry National Park
→ Mobile collaboration

7. Research Questions
What are the appropriate interfaces for co-present mobile collaboration with children?
What are the appropriate interfaces for switching between different modes of collaboration and varying levels of creation/consumption?
How do collaborative mobile technologies affect children’s collaboration?
“Appropriate” = developmentally (cognitively, etc.) appropriate

8. Co-present Mobile Collaboration
Space-sharing
Content-splitting
Sharing interactions
Navigation/focus
Editing
Copying/trading
Bumping (Hinckley, 2003)
Tossing (Yatani et al., 2005)
Stitching (Hinckley et al., 2004)
Ciconia Ciconia (White Stork) by Andrea Petrlik published 2003,
Kašmir Promet – Croatia, Available in the International Children’s Digital Library (ICDL)

9. Research Approach (Design & Evaluation)
Redesign with Kidsteam using Cooperative Inquiry
Formative field study using paper
Create collaborative narrative using “low-tech” means (e.g. paper, tape recorder, Polaroid camera, etc.)
Guide redesign of interface
Field, case study
Focus on collaboration
Multiple data collection methods
Technology logs, video, field notes, interviews/questionnaires, collaborative stories
How do collaborative mobile technologies affect children’s collaboration?

10. Mobile Collaboration for Young Children
Educational learning
The way mobile devices are used
Acknowledgments
Allison Druin
Gene Chipman
Mona Leigh Guha
Kidsteam
National Park Service
Microsoft
Questions