Tangible Storytelling to Learn the Four Seasons: Design and Preliminary Observations

Abstract

Tangible user interfaces offer a new medium for education that support concept development, with physical and virtual representations. It has manipulative properties allow students to utilize their haptic and motor skills which encourage learning and motivation. In this paper we developed an educational game based on a tangible environment that support interactive technology aiming to serve and enhance the learning process within the sciences field, we selected “The Four Seasons” topic. We proposed handcrafted objects as the physical objects that motivate kids to create their own stories for each season based on the available objects that represent basic elements for each season. We discussed the design process and development iterations as well as preliminary findings. This system has been evaluated in a field study with kids 4–7 years of age. We discuss the role of technology which can play in supporting children’s everyday creative storytelling and how it can raise the enthusiasm for leaning and engaging kids to the learning process.