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"I
have felt for the last several years that some of the very
best software ever developed (and some of the worst!) was
developed in the early years. I feel that we have gone overboard
trying to load today's software with so much glitz and multimedia
that we have stolen something important from kids--the ability
to visualize the problems they are solving for themselves.
I was a Director of Design for a software company and was
so disappointed that most of my designers did not know what
I meant when I referred to products like Rocky's Boots
and The Factory. I would love to have a place where
they could go and learn about these titles." Abstract Abstract Problem
Solution Our primary
goal is to acquaint students of children's software design
and new designers with innovative applications for children,
as well as to reintroduce the software to an older generation
of software designers. The creation of such a collection has
the potential to help reverse negative connotations associated
with computer technology for kids by showing its successful
uses and the learning theory behind the design. It would also
serve as a source of inspiration, or at least an archive of
good ideas concerning content and presentation that may encourage
or invoke new technologies. Considerations
and Rationale Strengthening
the culture and community of educational software designers
As the industry grows, educational software designers and developers are becoming nationally distributed, creating alternate points of concentration such as Boston, Massachusetts. If educational software follows other business trends, the separation of community members may increase to global distribution. The consensus seems to be that the separation contributes to the fragmentation of an already unsteady industry. The very people involved with children's software design may contribute to this fragmentation, as they possess a variety of interests and backgrounds (such as children, teaching, technology, and programming). Perhaps the Internet, a medium that is globally accessible, provides the power to collect and synthesize information making separation a shared resource as opposed to a detrimental force. If a sense of connection was established, the varied, growing areas could be harnessed and combined to produce positive results, as there are different ideas and users and abilities in different locations. A cohesive center would, perhaps, advocate the transfer and accumulation of needed information and ideas, allowing others to comment and add to the thoughts, designs, and opinions of others. Our site is designed to tailor to the needs and specifics of the intended users with the goal of creating such a feeling of inclusion and community between these varied and distant people. An initial question we addressed was how can we possibly anticipate a participant's needs? There is no one unified community at this point, though there is the potential to create one around the interests and commonalties of the intended participants. If we are able to show a need and relevance for the site that would motivate students and designers of children's software to visit, and if we are able to design the site so that these visitors feel as if the area was specifically tailored to their interests and needs, we may have the ability to connect this existing community. The various locations, attitudes, and ideas would be available and similar minds would be exposed to innovations and encouragement. Our hope is to provide such opportunities and connections to a community that is increasingly fragmented and disillusioned with its prospects. This intent has led us to create a questionnaire to assess what this population of prospective or active children's software designers wants from a web site with an intention such as ours. The questionnaire focuses on both content and the actual site construction. This includes what information the participants would want to be able to access about the titles, how they would find it most useful presented, and how they would like it organized (search structures). Our target questionnaire population includes students of children's software design around the United States (students from Harvard's Technology in Education program, Columbia's Computers in Education program, North Western's Educational Technology program), and actual designers (children's educational software news groups such as CHI Kids). Through these questionnaires we hope to develop a better idea of how these people see themselves, and thus how they would feel the most comfortable with such a site. Providing accessibility, and directly tailoring to the needs and desires of participants may serve to create a sense of collaboration and contribution between people who have interesting and innovative ideas but area not often presented with a context, or community, in which to share them. The creation of this site will be cognizant of the potential of this community, and will actively attempt to utilize this potential through the information we gather from the actual sources. If members of this community are encouraged, through our site, to collect and transfer relevant information, ideas and possibilities that have perhaps been discouraged by company CEO's may find an audience. The ideal goal of such activity would be creation, collaboration, and production using these materials. Collins,
A. Design Issues for Learning Environments. In S. Vosniadou,
E. De Corte, R. Glaser, & H. Mandl (Eds.), International
perspectives on the design of Technology Supported Learning
Environments. Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates,
1996. Retaining
institutional memory within the field of educational software
One intention of our site is to provide children's software developers with a common knowledge and narrative to encourage the acquisition of or strengthening of a sense of self and community. Though our intention differs from attempts to provide participants with a shared story in order to promote one cult-like knowledge of the product and process, we are choosing the content of this particular view of educational software history. A true retrospective would include all software created for children throughout the history of educational software; instead we focus on products viewed as educationally valuable and innovative. Software developers are often not given the opportunity to research what has been done before them. This is mainly a result of the nature of the medium. As the software and hardware changes, older software no longer runs on the new and improved platforms or consoles. Many of the titles we are considering, such as The Visual Almanac and The Voyage of the Mimi are on laser disks that need to be played on a laser disk player that is attached to a computer, that is attached to a television screen. Such a set up is extremely difficult to come by and these applications were designed less than ten years ago. Even those members of the community that designed some of the initial software can not access their own titles because of their personal hardware upgrades. This lack of viewable history limits the sense of a past in the area of educational software. This encourages the community to concentrate on the future instead of on incorporating and improving existing good ideas. This being the case, I believe that many innovative and encouraging ideas are lost. An archive of the positive areas and possibilities of children's software may lead to increased enthusiasm for the area. Not only will the visitors be allowed to view aspects of the older software, but also they will be able to access the individual stories of the original designers telling of the particular application and their experience in the industry. Instead of making the content relevant to the largest number of people, we attempt to include various subjects and products allowing a large population of designers or students to identify with certain areas or aspects of the history of children's software design that are relevant to them. This approach maintains the sense of the individual at the same time it creates a sense of place for this individual within the content of this historical community. Though our site is a deliberate use of products, narratives of designers, reviews, and narratives of commentators in the community to produce a sense of history and story, it attempts to offer credibility to both the individual and the institution. In addition to providing access to the story of the creation of such an organization, and hopefully encouraging a change in the way members of such view themselves, we intend for the site to help maintain the story. The site is a template which others can use to continue the research and documentation. As new records and comments are added, the history will be ongoing and changing, as is the actual existence of the industry. Linde,
Charlotte. "The Acquisition of a Speaker by a Story: How History
Becomes Memory and Identity." In Preparation for Ethos:
Special Issue on History and Subjectivity. Providing
a space for work and learning for the educational software
community Henri Lefebvre, in his book The Production of Space, identifies the "active occupation" of space which is especially relevant to any sort of space created in a virtual environment. Space is not something that exists alone, as it does not have an inside or an outside, but is rather a relationship between nature and presence. We may create the nature of the site, but the presence and the population is beyond our control. Lefebvre further describes the relationship between form and content by stating that: "forms therein have a powerful reality yet remain unreal." There exists an issue of the real and the perceived. We will create the real site with definite organization and information, but we can not control the way such a space is perceived and acted upon. Awareness of the perceived is especially important when trying to make sense of the real, as that is the only manner in which humans can hope to explore and understand something - it must be based on ones own perceptions and observations and communications, all of which are socially constructed means of communication and not really real at all but symbolic. This issue relates back to our idea of the participants, our target community of educational software developers and students. Our focus groups and questionnaires will hopefully provide insight into the overall feelings and perceptions about such a space, though there is no way to anticipate the perceptions of each individual. Through such discussions, we have come to realize the necessity of retaining control over additional input of information, from the individual reviews to further examples of quality software. The all-inclusive, full-access nature of the web promotes the possibility that the site will be accessed and contributed to by participants who are not the intended primary audience, such as parents, teachers, and children. Maintaining selective control over the site would combat the potential for the site to become simply a software review area as opposed to a discriminating archive. We wish to preserve our initial intent, while we encourage outside influences, participation, and contributions. Our primary method of ensuring this is to remain the gatekeepers of the displayed information, viewing the site as space with an intent, as opposed to one that is simply an ungoverned free-for-all. Given the knowledge that spaces have the ability to change and mold into other visions, we need to stay within the space and maintain it. This allows us to contribute to the modeling and hopefully to lead it, through comments and postings and executive decisions, in the direction we wish it to take to successfully achieve the intended goals that we have outlined. Lefebvre,
Henri. The Production of Space. Blackwell Publishing
Group. Designing
a site that solves a specific problem We anticipate that each user will come to the database with a unique question. Some of our preliminary user studies have shown that questions and interests in the software are very different, such as: "What were "big issues" in software design for children in the early 1980's?" "What was the first software title designed specifically for girls?" "What is the learning theory behind The Factory?" "Who was the team of designers on Robot Odyssey?" "I've heard a lot about Rocky's Boots-what is it? What did it do? How can I see it?" What are the projects that Kristina Hooper Woolsey has worked on?" With our interface, users should be able to define and create their experience to find information on any number of combinations of these kinds of questions. Through the use of multiple representations of information, the user can define the scope and depth of information that she would like to obtain. Our intent
is that this archive will serve to create discourse between
current and past designers and educators of educational software.
Discourse generates ideas. Having a resource, such as this
archive, can provide information on what ideas have already
been created, which have been "successful" and why. To facilitate
this discourse, we have designed a specific section of the
database for notes about particular software titles. Any user
coming into this online resource can contribute to the site
by sharing thoughts, ideas, or comments about particular software
titles. The design is much like the reader "review" pages
at Amazon.com or Barnes and Nobles.com. We want users to be
actively engaged in researching information, but also in contributing
to the development and content of this resource. Regulations
or legal
compliance issues affecting learning designs and innovations Another
potential regulation concern is the requirements for master's
projects, as determined by the faculty of our program. As
students, we have the liberty to choose our major project,
but must design and implement the project to complete particular
requirements for the masters degree. For example, we are limited
in what the final product can be-it must integrate learning,
design and technology and may not be a research project. Requirements
for final projects are like standards-they establish criteria
for the student to follow, so there can be a method for evaluation
of the process, research and final product. These requirements
have not yet been a problem, as our design interleaves information
on learning, design and technology. But we are aware that
we are designing for one two distinct users-the final product
will be for educators, students and designers interested in
educational software. The other "product" will be our description
of the problem, research and process that led us to this final
product-this information will be created for the faculty and
advisors of the LDT Program. Multiple
or competing solutions and designs By providing different representations of information, we can allow the users to create the kinds of "stories" about educational software that they are interested in obtaining. The compilation of different types of information can lead to interesting stories of causality or difference. In addition,
we intend for the users to actively shape the information
that is presented in the database. As users search, we can
receive information about the kinds of information that are
most often requested, which can further inform our design
and content on the site. Implementation
and organizational issues We have
not yet decided on a way to introduce the database to others,
but we have discussed many different ideas. We plan to conduct
user studies for the design of the site, and have accumulated
different contact names at Stanford, Columbia, Harvard, Northwestern,
San Francisco State University, Berkeley, as well as specific
designers at educational software companies. One idea is to
host a brainstorming meeting, to bring designers, educators
and students together to collaborate for an afternoon. While
this collaboration could be done in a virtual environment,
we think that perhaps a face to face discussion could prove
interesting as well If our archive is designed to create communication,
discussion and collaboration, we would like it to be introduced
in such an environment. The afternoon could be spent discussing
the importance or weaknesses of educational software, or brainstorming
additional methods for recording the history of educational
software, which could include plans for recording what is
currently being produced. As issues and discussion of knowledge
management become more prevalent, it is important to think
about the preservation of this information for future designers
and educators. Another idea is to introduce the web-site via
an online, virtual meeting of the minds. Because we are involving
students, educators and designers in the design process, our
hope is that the site will already have an existing, participating
community who is aware of its progress and opportunities.
We could bring these users together for an afternoon to brainstorm
some of the same ideas. This could allow for users and designers
in other areas to participate as well.
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