Leveraging children's behavioral distribution and singularities in new interactive environments: Study in kindergarten field trips

Abstract

The behavior observations on young children in new, first-in-the-life environments have significant implications. We can often uniquely observe a child's unforeseen interaction with the environment and peer-children. It would be not only a piece of discovery but a beginning of an open quest worth exploring. Out-of-classroom activities like kindergarten's field trips are perfect opportunities, but those are quite different from regular classroom activities where the teachers' conventional observation methods are hardly practical. This paper proposes a novel approach to extend the teachers' awareness on the children's field trip behaviors by means of mobile and sensor technology. We adopt the notion of behavioral distribution and singularities. We estimate the children's representative behavioral state in a given context, and study the effect of focusing on the behaviors which are unlikely in this context. We discuss our 14-month collaborative study and various qualitative benefits through multiple deployments on actual kindergarten field trips. © 2012 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.