Computationally Enhanced Toolkits for Children: Historical Review and a Framework for Future Design

Robotics toolkits and physical computing devices have been used in educational settings for many decades. Based on a techno-historical analysis of the development of 30 years of development of these devices, this monograph examines their design principles and presents a frame- work for the analysis and future design, based on the analytic construct of “selective exposure,” which examines what is foregrounded or back- grounded in hardware and software design. Selective exposure has two sub-dimensions: usability, which examines how the material communi- cates rules for its use, and power, which looks at how cognitive and physical operations are mapped to each other, and how the design can make these connections more explicit. I show how these dimensions crucially impact what children can achieve with these materials, and make the case for the design of toolkits in synchrony with the childŠs developmental trajectory