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Getting Kids Into Shapes
Alissa Antle in the school of interactive art and technology is using a concept called "mixed reality" to help teach elementary school kids about geometric solids such as cylinders and cubes.
Professor Alissa Antle in one of the new labs at SFU Surrey
It was a cool winter's day outside Francis deSalle private school in Burnaby. Inside, the atmosphere in the school library was frosty too. Four adults and four children sat around a table. Alissa Antle, now an Assistant Professor in the School of Interactive Arts and Technology (SIAT) at SFU Surrey, was trying to get the grade four and five children to talk about the effect TV news had on them emotionally. The questions were eliciting one-word answers from the children, yet at times they would whisper to each other animatedly. The attacks of September 11th, 2001, had just burst onto the children's TV programming schedules and Antle was working for the CBC on a website designed to cater to the media interests of children. Suddenly, some of the kids started talking excitedly to a teacher's aide who was also at the table. The aide was young and well known to the children.
It was then that Antle had a brainwave; hire a 15-year-old to interview kids. This idea paid immediate dividends. During the subsequent user study, the teenage interviewer asked 10 and 11-year-olds difficult questions, including, "How do you know when you belong in the world?" The kids often gave incredibly complete and well thought out responses. "I realized that children need a forum to explore and express their feelings and thoughts about "adult news" with other children, because they feel safer doing it with adults out of the picture," says Antle. The result of her research was a website called OutBurst, part of cbc4kids.ca. It was a place where children could create, save, submit and e-mail their friends high quality media details that contained their own voices. Without any promotion, the new cbc4kids.ca received one million visits in just 4 months. Despite its success, the project was shelved due to organizational changes but it can be seen at http://archived.cbc4kids.cbcr3.com.
Antle's current work at SFU also involves children. She is creating a tangible computer-mediated system where young children interact with geometric solids like cubes and cones. The goal is to learn why youngsters have so much difficulty understanding how 2-dimensional shapes and 3-dimensional forms relate to each other. In preliminary talks with elementary school teachers this was identified as a key problem area.
Studies involving children can be logistically challenging. Before Antle could begin her research at Stratford Hall, a private school in Vancouver, the project had to pass four levels of ethical clearance: the SFU ethics committee, the school principal, the class teacher and the parents of each child in the study. Antle generally works with private schools, otherwise a fifth party must approve the project: the local school board.
In her research, Antle employs a concept called mixed reality, which involves a computer used in combination with a physical entity. In Antle's case the entities are 3-dimensional clay shapes. One proposed system would employ a computer to project a 2-dimensional representation of Oscar the Grouch sitting in his usual trash bin--a cylinder. Children are asked to use some clay cutters to slice a 2-D representation of Oscar's bin from either a 3-D rectangular block or a 3-D cylinder and then place it against the projected shape on the wall. Because of a cognitive disconnect, many children cut a section from the rectangular block. When they place this against the screen, the computer automatically shows the shape on the screen, but in a colour unlike the trash bin, giving the children immediate feedback on their choice and where they have erred. This personal tactile experience is more valuable than a teacher telling the child that they chose the wrong shape. Antle videotapes all interactions in such experiments and later analysis of these videos provides huge insight into the problem-solving strategies of children. The clay-cutter tool allows children to externalize their learning and thinking about shapes in much the same way they use their fingers as props for counting.
Antle has a Research Tools and Instruments grant from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) to build a mixed reality lab at SFU Surrey for experiments on how children develop cognitive skills through play and physical exploration. Antle says, "There is a lot of skill in good experiment design and this design is only improved when children are actively involved in the process." She will use her new lab to create informal learning tools that help children overcome their developmental difficulties. She wants to replace what she calls "mind junk", referring to typical kids computer entertainment offerings, with fun, engaging and developmentally appropriate mixed reality experiences.
Antle grew up in Coquitlam, BC. After graduating with a BA in Liberal Arts and a BASc in Systems Design Engineering from the University of Waterloo, she worked for IBM and McDonald Dettwiler, before becoming the Executive Producer & Senior Interaction Designer for Brainium Technologies in Vancouver in 1996. At Brainium she was lead designer of online science adventures and interactive exhibits for children one of which is still in use at Science World in Vancouver. After leaving Brainium she worked as an advanced media consultant for companies such as NASA and the CBC. During this time, she had two children and obtained her PhD from UBC in Computational Geography. Her thesis involved the design and evaluation of interactive visualization tools for spatial data and metadata.
When Antle was offered a position at SFU in 2005, she was considering the Human-Computer Interaction departments at MIT, Stanford and UBC, but felt ultimately that they had a narrow focus on desktop computers and limited design vision. She liked the multidisciplinary design-oriented approach at SFU. "SFU is less conservative than other places," says Antle. "There is a lot less pressure on junior faculty members and people are allowed to follow their own interests in research." At SIAT she loves the variety of influences within the faculty. As for her own contribution, she says, "Every department needs a geographer for their concept of space and the innovative way that they work." Her colleagues include architects, graphic designers and performance artists. "At most other places, everyone is a computer scientist. There is a lot more room to be creative at SFU," says Antle who is looking forward to working on an interactive art piece for kids in the coming years.
Antle's webpage and contact info: http://www.siat.sfu.ca/index.php?q=person/7
Written by Julian Worker
It was then that Antle had a brainwave; hire a 15-year-old to interview kids. This idea paid immediate dividends. During the subsequent user study, the teenage interviewer asked 10 and 11-year-olds difficult questions, including, "How do you know when you belong in the world?" The kids often gave incredibly complete and well thought out responses. "I realized that children need a forum to explore and express their feelings and thoughts about "adult news" with other children, because they feel safer doing it with adults out of the picture," says Antle. The result of her research was a website called OutBurst, part of cbc4kids.ca. It was a place where children could create, save, submit and e-mail their friends high quality media details that contained their own voices. Without any promotion, the new cbc4kids.ca received one million visits in just 4 months. Despite its success, the project was shelved due to organizational changes but it can be seen at http://archived.cbc4kids.cbcr3.com.
Antle's current work at SFU also involves children. She is creating a tangible computer-mediated system where young children interact with geometric solids like cubes and cones. The goal is to learn why youngsters have so much difficulty understanding how 2-dimensional shapes and 3-dimensional forms relate to each other. In preliminary talks with elementary school teachers this was identified as a key problem area.
Studies involving children can be logistically challenging. Before Antle could begin her research at Stratford Hall, a private school in Vancouver, the project had to pass four levels of ethical clearance: the SFU ethics committee, the school principal, the class teacher and the parents of each child in the study. Antle generally works with private schools, otherwise a fifth party must approve the project: the local school board.
In her research, Antle employs a concept called mixed reality, which involves a computer used in combination with a physical entity. In Antle's case the entities are 3-dimensional clay shapes. One proposed system would employ a computer to project a 2-dimensional representation of Oscar the Grouch sitting in his usual trash bin--a cylinder. Children are asked to use some clay cutters to slice a 2-D representation of Oscar's bin from either a 3-D rectangular block or a 3-D cylinder and then place it against the projected shape on the wall. Because of a cognitive disconnect, many children cut a section from the rectangular block. When they place this against the screen, the computer automatically shows the shape on the screen, but in a colour unlike the trash bin, giving the children immediate feedback on their choice and where they have erred. This personal tactile experience is more valuable than a teacher telling the child that they chose the wrong shape. Antle videotapes all interactions in such experiments and later analysis of these videos provides huge insight into the problem-solving strategies of children. The clay-cutter tool allows children to externalize their learning and thinking about shapes in much the same way they use their fingers as props for counting.
Antle has a Research Tools and Instruments grant from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) to build a mixed reality lab at SFU Surrey for experiments on how children develop cognitive skills through play and physical exploration. Antle says, "There is a lot of skill in good experiment design and this design is only improved when children are actively involved in the process." She will use her new lab to create informal learning tools that help children overcome their developmental difficulties. She wants to replace what she calls "mind junk", referring to typical kids computer entertainment offerings, with fun, engaging and developmentally appropriate mixed reality experiences.
Antle grew up in Coquitlam, BC. After graduating with a BA in Liberal Arts and a BASc in Systems Design Engineering from the University of Waterloo, she worked for IBM and McDonald Dettwiler, before becoming the Executive Producer & Senior Interaction Designer for Brainium Technologies in Vancouver in 1996. At Brainium she was lead designer of online science adventures and interactive exhibits for children one of which is still in use at Science World in Vancouver. After leaving Brainium she worked as an advanced media consultant for companies such as NASA and the CBC. During this time, she had two children and obtained her PhD from UBC in Computational Geography. Her thesis involved the design and evaluation of interactive visualization tools for spatial data and metadata.
When Antle was offered a position at SFU in 2005, she was considering the Human-Computer Interaction departments at MIT, Stanford and UBC, but felt ultimately that they had a narrow focus on desktop computers and limited design vision. She liked the multidisciplinary design-oriented approach at SFU. "SFU is less conservative than other places," says Antle. "There is a lot less pressure on junior faculty members and people are allowed to follow their own interests in research." At SIAT she loves the variety of influences within the faculty. As for her own contribution, she says, "Every department needs a geographer for their concept of space and the innovative way that they work." Her colleagues include architects, graphic designers and performance artists. "At most other places, everyone is a computer scientist. There is a lot more room to be creative at SFU," says Antle who is looking forward to working on an interactive art piece for kids in the coming years.
Antle's webpage and contact info: http://www.siat.sfu.ca/index.php?q=person/7
Written by Julian Worker