1. FLAVOR COLLAGE
2. SELF_WRAPING SHOES
3. LINE MEDIA
4. NAVIGATION BAND
5. LIVE TALK
6. BREAK THE EGGS
7. PENGUIN BATTERY
8. PRELUDE
9. EBBSFLEET DATA TRUST
Creatiity education
Scenario-based play
Collebrative creativity
Prelude is a toy system for children aged 4-6 to develop and improve collaborative creativity.
Collaborative creativity is the ability of a group to generate novel outcome. Collaborative creativity depends on strong individual creativity and good communication.
Neuroplasticity suggest that the best period is between Year 2 - 7 where children begin to practice their socio-affective functions where they have the abilities to express themselfs using language.
Jean Piaget, a 20th century psychologist and cognitive theorist, identified four stages of learning in his theory of cognitive development:
(0-2) Preoperational
(2-7) Pre-operational Stage
is crucial for social and emotional development as well as for creativity and imagination.
(7-11) Concrete Operational Stage
(12+) Formal Operational Stage
Around Year 4, children's social interaction and language development flourish.
Imaginative play is a good education practices to this situation because it provides creative activities, sensorial objects that children familiar with, and engaged experiences for the whole class. It helps children to nurturing creativity and develop social skills. And reduces teachers stress in teaching.
They often reinforce social biases by being designed differently for boys and girls and limit collaborative creativity because they're based on real-life scenarios.
According to the research, their are two kind of imaginative play: the first one focuses on imitating and pretending, while the second kind focuses on Imaging, Creating, and Socialing.
However, most of these toy companies and props manufacturers relies on the first kind too much: Most of the props were sourced from real life scenarios, produced by big companies, distributed by parents, kindergarten, KidZania, and primary schools, and used by children.
Material based toys that physically editable made by children and teachers are versatile, could foster collaborative
creativity
Shape and build on soft objects, draw, and mimic sound are the most common and intuitive approaches of creating as a children. I will start from here.
Creation Test
Research question:
Does abstract-shaped construction toys help with association and creation?
Process:
Create soft abstract shaped blocks for people to construct
Insights:
Physically freedom helps with association
User preference test
Research question:
What kind of shapes is preferred?
Process:
Test with soft abstract shaped blocks various in shapes and size.
Insights:
Simple and rigor shaped blocks were preferred.
Hand-sized, self-supported blocks were preferred.
Composed objects were hard to support itself.
Construction test
Research question:
How to enable complex construction?
Process:
Test and construct with soft blocks vary in stiffness.
Insights:
Tube sized blocks were preferred as supporting for space expansion.
Stocky blocks were preferred as decorations.
Connection Iterations
This section shows solutions of magnets connections from machine and hand stiches to case glued to fabrics, then to directly 3d printed on, and finally case was crewed on the fabrics to improve manufacturing, environmental sustainability, usability, and stability.
Size and numbers of magnets were also re-considered many times.
Electronic connections iteration
This section shows Interactions of the electronic connections iteration. From magnets with pogo pin to intersection structure to final structure in which magnet were capsuled inside and communications through NFC and Wifi.
This note recorded the validation part of prelude project. It divided into two sections, each of the section recorded the participants’ information, activity, duration, as well as ISL(inner state language).
Participants:
A, 5.5 years old girl;
B: A's friends & classmate, 5.75 years old;
C, 7.42 years old boy, Neighbor of A's family;
D, 4.08 years old girl, C's sister
Workshop1: Doctor-patient role game.
Process: First let children familiar with props inside the kits, after which the four of them would be allocated roles: the doctor, the nurse, the patient, and patient sibling. The game would begin by patient and patient sibling knocking the doctor’s office.
Observation methods: ISL during of each child during the process would be recorded. Video and audio are recorded for references.
Workshop2: Princess-rescue role game.
Process: First let children familiar with props inside the kits, after which the each of them would be allocated a role: the magician, the engineer, the guardian, and explorer. Given the context that princess was kidnaped by the evil monster from deep forest, they were asked to form a team and utilise their superpowers to rescue the princess from the monster.
Observation methods: ISL during of each child during the process would be recorded. Video and audio are recorded for references.
The initial set up was 40 minutes for both workshops with 20 minutes break in between.
In the condition of adopting traditional prop box “ doctor-patient”, children were focusing on understanding each of these props: what are they and how they could be used, at the begining 15 minutes. There debatings centers at definitions of each items and who were supposed to be using them. Game ended at 25 minutes because they get bored and none of them would like to continuing “pretending” their roles.
In the condition of prelude prop box, however, children focuses on creating objects of their own and defining means of each items according to their own understandings. It’s observed that communications has increased compared to the first workshop.
Inner State Language ( ISL) were used for invididual to express their internal state and use of which helps children to develop social skills and communications.
ISL were classified into 4 categories:
Inner perception, desire, cognition, and emotion.
Total language used in each of the sections were abstracted according to the video and were sorted into the above 4 categories, as well as non ISL.
Results
These diagrams illustrate the utilization of Inner State Language (ISL) over time, comparing the frequency of ISL to non-ISL occurrences during play with the Doctor-patient toy (blue) and Prelude toy (red), and tracking the four types of ISL usage every five minutes. It was observed that ISL usage nearly doubled in comparison to the doctor-patient role-playing scenario. The unstructured nature of the activity fostered spontaneous play, extending the session beyond the planned 40 minutes.
The comparison of ratios indicates that children used ISL more often in the scenario involving the Prelude toy. Further analysis of the diagrams shows that this increased use of ISL in the Prelude scenario did not result from a greater overall amount of speech.
The final diagram highlights a marked increase in the use of ISL, particularly in cognitive language, suggesting this as a potential pathway to future developmental progress.