Children and ICT: New Roles and Benefits

Staff - Faculty of Informatics

Start date: 7 November 2011

End date: 8 November 2011

The Faculty of Informatics and the Equal Opportunities Service are pleased to announce the seminar

 

Children and ICT: New Roles and Benefits

Recent studies report on how parents’ approach towards ICT, and in particular how comfortable or intimidated they are in using it, has a strong influence on their children’s attitude too. Looking at statistics, women are overall less at ease with using ICT than men and as they tend to spend more time with and are role models for their children, specially girls, this could have a negative effect on the way this young generation will engage and take advantage of technology. Thus, in order to promote and maintain a positive and constructive approach to ICT and enable young users to exploit it in full, we are here exploring ways to support children in the acquisition of essential literacy skills by using ICT and give them a central role in doing so. The focus of this workshop is on exploring the active role children can play in the design and evaluation of better tools and software for them, with a special emphasis on e-book reading and authoring. In fact, when looking at literacy skills, in particular at reading and considering the same age group, there is clear evidence of boys being weaker readers than girls. We are exploring how technology could support both boys and girls in getting these essential skills. There will be presentations from international experts sharing their experiences in running co-design with children in different contexts, including e-book authoring and reading. We will also hear about user studies exploring how children interact with existing e-books. Issues emerged from presentation will then be discussed in an open session, followed by conclusions and wrap up to close works.

Monday, November 7 - Room A34 (Red building)

 

09.30

 

Welcome, introduction and opening of workshop

Monica Landoni, Faculty of Informatics, USI and Arianna Carugati-Giugliano, Equal Opportunities Service, USI

 

09.45

 

Children as Authors - the Theatre of Design

Janet Read, International Child Computer Interaction,  the University of Central Lancashire, Preston, UK

 

10.15

 

Embodied narratives: you play, we co-design

M. Paloma Diaz Perez, Computer Science Department, Universidad Carlos III, Madrid, Spain

 

10.45

 

Coffee Break

 

11.00

 

The impact of e-books on young children’s reading habits

Sally Maynard, Department of Information Science, Loughborough University, Leicestershire, UK

 

11.30

 

HEBE: making reading fun

Luca Colombo and Monica Landoni, Faculty of Informatics, Università della Svizzera italiana, USI

 

12.00

 

Discussion and Wrap up session

 

12.30

 

End of Workshop