Designing and Testing a Mobile Creative Coding Application for Children
Children are becoming increasingly engaged with applications on mobile phones. They use mobile apps to socialize, communicate, and play games. There is an opportunity to channel this familiarity and fascination with mobile phones in order to introduce children to computational thinking and creative...
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| Format: | Thesis |
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Massachusetts Institute of Technology
2022
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| Online Access: | https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/139229 |
| _version_ | 1811068516793581568 |
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| author | Green, Rachel A. |
| author2 | Rusk, Natalie |
| author_facet | Rusk, Natalie Green, Rachel A. |
| author_sort | Green, Rachel A. |
| collection | MIT |
| description | Children are becoming increasingly engaged with applications on mobile phones. They use mobile apps to socialize, communicate, and play games. There is an opportunity to channel this familiarity and fascination with mobile phones in order to introduce children to computational thinking and creative expression. Towards that end, the Lifelong Kindergarten (LLK) Group is designing a free mobile application that will provide a motivating, creative, and accessible way for children to learn how to code through creating interactive animations that they can send to friends and family. This thesis identifies key design questions and challenges involved in the design of this new coding platform for children, reviews the strategies other mobile applications have employed in addressing related design challenges, and introduces a variety of solutions that our research team has developed, along with their affordances and limitations. This thesis also presents an analysis of data from conducting playtests and semi-structured interviews, and suggests lessons learned for other designers of mobile coding applications for children. |
| first_indexed | 2024-09-23T07:57:08Z |
| format | Thesis |
| id | mit-1721.1/139229 |
| institution | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| last_indexed | 2024-09-23T07:57:08Z |
| publishDate | 2022 |
| publisher | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | mit-1721.1/1392292022-01-15T04:11:10Z Designing and Testing a Mobile Creative Coding Application for Children Green, Rachel A. Rusk, Natalie Resnick, Mitchel Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Children are becoming increasingly engaged with applications on mobile phones. They use mobile apps to socialize, communicate, and play games. There is an opportunity to channel this familiarity and fascination with mobile phones in order to introduce children to computational thinking and creative expression. Towards that end, the Lifelong Kindergarten (LLK) Group is designing a free mobile application that will provide a motivating, creative, and accessible way for children to learn how to code through creating interactive animations that they can send to friends and family. This thesis identifies key design questions and challenges involved in the design of this new coding platform for children, reviews the strategies other mobile applications have employed in addressing related design challenges, and introduces a variety of solutions that our research team has developed, along with their affordances and limitations. This thesis also presents an analysis of data from conducting playtests and semi-structured interviews, and suggests lessons learned for other designers of mobile coding applications for children. M.Eng. 2022-01-14T14:58:01Z 2022-01-14T14:58:01Z 2021-06 2021-06-17T20:13:15.281Z Thesis https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/139229 In Copyright - Educational Use Permitted Copyright MIT http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC-EDU/1.0/ application/pdf Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| spellingShingle | Green, Rachel A. Designing and Testing a Mobile Creative Coding Application for Children |
| title | Designing and Testing a Mobile Creative Coding Application for Children |
| title_full | Designing and Testing a Mobile Creative Coding Application for Children |
| title_fullStr | Designing and Testing a Mobile Creative Coding Application for Children |
| title_full_unstemmed | Designing and Testing a Mobile Creative Coding Application for Children |
| title_short | Designing and Testing a Mobile Creative Coding Application for Children |
| title_sort | designing and testing a mobile creative coding application for children |
| url | https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/139229 |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT greenrachela designingandtestingamobilecreativecodingapplicationforchildren |