Building interactive spaces for learning: two pilot studies for literacy acquisition

Building interactive spaces for learning:
two pilot studies for literacy acquisition
Marta Cortés Orduña
mcortes@ee.oulu.fi

• Who are we?
• Technology Enhanced Environments
–Interactive Spaces
–NFC
• Learning Environments For Children
–TELEs
–Pilot 1: Kindergarten
–Pilot 2: Finnish as a 2nd Language
• Future Work
iSpaces http://www.oulu.fi/cse/ispaces

Who are we?
• iSpaces group, CSE, University of Oulu
–Prof. Jukka Riekki (jpr@ee.oulu.fi)
–Iván Sánchez Milara (ivan@ee.oulu.fi)
–Marta Cortés Orduña (mcortes@ee.oulu.fi)
–Mikko Pyykkönen (mpyykkon@ee.oulu.fi)
• Pilots organized in FSR project, coordinated by the Faculty
of Education
–Prof. Riitta Liisa Korkeamäki (Riitta-Liisa.Korkeamaki@oulu.fi)
–Päivi Jokinen (paivi.jokinen@oulu.fi)
• We are part of the interdisciplinary research community
INSPIRES (http://www.oulu.fi/eudaimonia/node/19920)

TECHNOLOGY ENHANCED
ENVIRONMENTS

Interactive Spaces. NFC Technology
• Interactive Space
–Explicit interaction
–User in control
–User communicates goals performing predefined actions
through a dedicated UI.
• Near Field Communication (NFC)
–Short range wireless technology (devices closer than 5 cm)
• NFC tag stores data permanently.
• Readers embedded in mobile phone.
READER

Technology Enhanced Environments
• NFC tags embedded in objects in the environment
–”Active areas” announced with icons.
• Mobile phone used as a ”magic wand” to interact with the
objects.
–Touching the object with the phone triggers multimedia content.

LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS
FOR CHILDREN

Technology Enhanced Learning
Environments
• Using Interactive Spaces, a learning environment is
active…
–As in Bonwell and Eison view of Active Learning
–In the sense that learning implies physical movement and action
–In the sense that the environment produces responses
“Students must engage in such higher-order thinking tasks as
analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. Within this context, it is
proposed that strategies promoting active learning be defined as
instructional activities involving students in doing things and
thinking about what they are doing.”

Technology Enhanced Learning
Environments
COLLABORATION
PHYSICAL ACTIVITY
ENGAGEDMENT
PARTICIPATION
EXPLORATION

Pilot 1: Touch&Learn to read
• Recognizing own, relative’s and friends’names is one of
the first steps in literacy.
–Recognition of name symbols leads to recognition of letters in
that name.
• Touch&Learn to read assists young children in the
early stages of the learning to read process by helping
them to recognize the symbols on nametags
• In Finnish kindergartens and
primary schools, children
belongings are labeled with
nametags.
‒ Chairs, tables, coatracks...

• Children began to use their previous letter knowledge more accurately
– Looking at their order rather than using their logographic memory (e.g. Markus vs.
Marcus)
• Children’s letter knowledge improved by one to four letters
– Letters were not focused in the play at all
• Collaboration
– Literacy activities changed from individual practices to collaborative peer interaction
• Social interaction
– Share their texts on mobiles and invite others to listen to their names
• Participation
– Children were eager to ask for help and advice their peers
• Physical activity
– Teachers appreciated children could move around
• Teachers were motivated to continue with the experience
– From “technophobia” to “technofilia”
Riekki, J., Cortés, M., Hytönen, M., Sánchez, I., and Korkeamäki, R.-L. Touching nametags with NFC phones: A
playful approach to learning to read. In Transactions on Edutainment X, Z. Pan, A. Cheok, W. Müller, I. Iurgel, P.
Petta, and B. Urban, Eds., vol. 7775 of Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2013,
pp. 228–242.

Pilot 2: Finnish as a Second Language
• Preparatory instruction groups are organized to help
children with foreign background to learn Finnish language
and culture.
–Instruction may start from teaching the latin alphabet
–Up to one year
–Open
–”Multi-” groups: multi-cultural, multi-age, multi-level
• Our group:
– 11 children with ages ranging from 8 and 12 years old
– Multicultural group.
• Afganisthan, Somali, China, Russia, Irak, and Greece
– Their literacy knowledge vary greatly
• not only in Finnish, but in their mother tongues also.

• Confirmation of the same results as in previous
experience but:
–Much more complex target group:
• Diversity of age, knowledge
–Longer piloting period: A complete school year
• From teachers’ interviews (i) and videos (v):
–(i) participation,
• (v) children helped creating material or preparing the sessions
• (v) they tried to touch every label with the phones (even not
enhanced ones)
–(i) collaboration,
• (v) they helped each other in all the sessions: from switching on the
phone to locating the correct animal in the zoo or the correct letter
in the corridor

–(i) differentiation,
• Apps adapt easily to children with different needs
–(i) motivation,
• according to teachers, phones add motivation per se to the
activities
• (v) there was excitement when it was announced that there was a
session with the phones
–(i) tool,
• it was stressed several times that this was a tool, but the teacher
needs to be present
• (v) there was always one of the teachers supervising and helping
when needed.

–(i) old phones
• they wanted children to be able to take more quality pictures to use
those when creating the material
–(i) noisy / annoying to others
• sometimes, sessions should be organized with smaller groups,
because everyone wants to touch everything at the same time (e.g
body parts)
• Other teachers were annoyed by the noise, when playing in the
corridor.
–We suggested them the possibility of headphones. “No!!!! It is
interactive when it is loud!”
http://www.hs.fi/paivanlehti/15012013/kotimaa/Oulussa+opiskellaan+suomea+k%C3%A
4nnyk%C3%A4n+ja+%C3%A4lytarrojen+avulla/a1358138122965

Future Work
• Creation of authoring tools for teachers
• Testing other devices, different to mobile phones
–Activity Pad, Activity Mouse
• Exploring participatory design of learning tools with
children
• Spin-off for commercializing learning
solutions

Thanks!
Marta Cortés Orduña
mcortes@ee.oulu.fi

Building interactive spaces for learning: two pilot studies for literacy acquisition

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