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Patt2016 presentation2
This document summarizes a study on teaching "Smart Fashion" using electronic textiles within the design and technology (D&T) curriculum. The researchers conducted teacher interviews and analyzed teaching resources to understand opportunities and areas for improvement. They found opportunities to develop problem solving, understanding representations and materials, and teamwork. Experience with conductive thread and aesthetics needed more focus. The researchers will update resources on programming and further test them with teacher feedback to develop the curriculum.
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Patt2016 presentation2
- 1. How to teach‘Smart Fashion’ within the D&T curriculum: have we got it right? SARAH DAVIES & ALISON HARDY NOTTINGHAM TRENT UNIVERSITY
- 2. why we didthis? INTRODUCTION 2
- 3. what do otherssay about teaching electronics? involves recognising the elements that structure a system, and, more important, the ways that those elements interconnect to impact each other and the overall function of a system. Peppler et al, (2013, p. 21) Constructionism ‘Objects-to-think-with’ Papert and Harel (1991) Kit of no parts Perner-Wilson and Buecheley (2013) LITERATURE 3
- 4. the resources simple circuitmake a soft switch make a soft battery holder METHOD 4
- 5.
- 6. what data didwe use? oteaching handouts and kit components – documentary analysis ostimulated recall transcripts - interview METHOD 6
- 7. Rode et al(2015) framework. Aesthetics young people desire to make aesthetically pleasing artefacts, however, these complex decisions can hinder a participant’s creativity; sometimes aesthetic choices override decisions about the right solution ; these aesthetic choices give young people “design agency” Creativity creativity can be a factor in problem solving within e-textiles – ‘an abstract problem solving mechanism’ and/or creativity can support free expression within e-textiles – ‘concrete and tangible skill building’ Constructing young people need the skills to be able to produce tangible objects this includes physical skills: - sewing, - soldering, - using pliers, - wire strippers and other hand-tools. acquisition of skills, impact on the young person’s realisation of artefacts from preparation to final outcome weak execution of stitching can lead to short circuits Visualising Multiple Representatives visualising 2D designs into 3D objects can be a challenge there is a need for young people to understand why they have to follow the 2D representations into real world 3D representations Understanding Materials young people need to understand how different materials operate that objects, for example crocodile clips, have the same properties as conductive thread issues associated with short circuiting CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK 7
- 8.
- 9. Opportunities: teacher interviews UnderstandingMaterials They talked about how the coin cell differed from their tradition counterpart (pen cell) ; positive side “curled around the edge” (Teacher A Line 180) Creativity - abstract problem solving working in teams was good for “sharing ideas and working together as a team” (Line 169) to solve abstract problems. early sequence of activity “built my confidence up straight away” Visualising multiple representations The teachers talk about “undoing” (Teacher C, line 69) and re-doing the circuit through the clipping and “quick to unclip” nature of the crocodile clips (Teacher E, line 31). Teacher A discusses how the LED gives her instant feedback when she says that “it is easy to see if you are doing it right or wrong because the end objective, the goal, to get the LED to light up isn’t working” (Line 168). FINDINGS 9
- 10. Constructing helpful fordeveloping the construction skills (required to make Smart Fashion) thread was “not easy to work with” (Teacher D Line 231). Aesthetic “it’s always nice, isn’t it, to have something physical especially when you have done it yourself” (Line 240). FINDINGS AND ANALYSIS 10
- 11. what have wefound out? Opportunities for: • Problem solving – creativity • 2D/3D – visualising multi representations • conductive/non-conductive properties - material (and component) understanding, • Team working Need to build on: • experiences with conductive thread (hand and machine) - constructing • Aesthetics • Free expression – creativity CONCLUSION 11
- 12. what will wedo next? Develop next iteration of the resources - develop Smart Fashion teaching resources - programming test the remaining resources with teachers follow up interviews with teachers about use in classroom 12
- 13. thank you forlistening Sarah Davies Nottingham Trent University Burton Street Nottingham NG1 4HH +44 (0)115 8482644 Sarah.davies@ntu.ac.uk twitter: @sdsdavies Alison Hardy Nottingham Trent University Burton Street Nottingham NG1 4HH +44 (0)115 848 2198 Alsion.Hardy@ntu.ac.uk twitter: @hardy_alison 13
- 14. further reading Buechley, L.(2006). A construction kit for electronic textiles. Wearable Computers, 2006 10th IEEE International Symposium on, 83-90. Davies, S., & Rutland, M. (2013). Did the UK digital design and technology (DD&T) programme lead to innovative curriculum change within secondary schools? Technology Education for the Future: A Play on Sustainability, Christchurch, New Zealand, 2-6 December. The Technology Environmental Science and Mathematics Education Research Centre, University of Waikato., pp. 115- 121. Kafai, Y. B., Fields, D. A., & Searle, K. A. (2014). Electronic textiles as disruptive designs: Supporting and challenging maker activities in schools. Harvard Educational Review, 84(4), 532-556. Kettley, S. (2016). Designing with smart textiles. London: Fairchild Books. Ngai, G., Chan, S. C. F., Cheung, J. C. Y., & Lau, W. W. Y. (2010). Deploying a wearable computing platform for computer education. IEEE Transactions in Learning Technologies, 3(1), 45-55. Papert, S., & Harel, I. (1991). Situating constructionism. In S. Papert, & I. Harel (Eds.), Constructionism (pp. 1-11) Ablex Publishing Corporation. Peppler, K., Gresalfi, M., Tekinbas, K. S., & Santo, R. (2014). Soft circuits: Crafting E-fashion with DIY electronics MIT Press. Perner-Wilson, H., & Buechley, L. (2013). Handcrafting textile sensors. In L. Buechley, K. Peppler, M. Eisenberg & Y. Kafai (Eds.), Textile messages: Dispatches from the world of e-textiles and education (pp. 55-65). Oxford: Peter Lang Publishing Incorporated. Pulé, S., & McCardle, J. (2010). Developing novel explanatory models for electronics education. Design and Technology Education: An International Journal, 15(2) Resnick, M., & Rosenbaum, E. (2013). Designing for tinkerability. Design, make, Play: Growing the Next Generation of STEM Innovators, 163-181. Rode, J. A., Weibert, A., Marshall, A., Aal, K., von Rekowski, T., el Mimoni, H., & Booker, J. (2015). From computational thinking to computational making. Proceedings of the 2015 ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing, 239-250. Seymour, S. (2008). Fashionable technology. DE: Springer Verlag. Wilkinson, K., & Petrich, M. (2013). The art of tinkering: Meet 150 makers working at the intersection of art, science & technology REFERENCES 14
Editor's Notes
- #2 Hello and welcome to our presentation. We are going to use the next 20 minutes to talk to you about a study into teaching Smart Fashion – or interactive product design.
- #3 So first off: why did we do this? Well we work in England and as you may or may not be aware, the curriculum has been reformed with a goal of modernisation and a move for teachers to teach as multi-material specialists. Smart fashion is about the integration of electronics and computation within a garment that can be worn on the body – meaning different functionality to traditional electronics taught in school e.g. it needs to be flexible and more technologies used which include flexible conductive fabrics, thread, small component parts. So the question, how is this type of curriculum being taught in school? Well we can see that textiles teachers are promoting the convergence of electronics and textiles, however, we feel that this is limited to expensive electronic kits combined with existing textile projects e.g. lighting the eyes on an ugly doll. In conversation with one of the team from the Subject Association recently, we sensed a feeling that e-textiles undermined dominating electronics but the nature is subtler in that the electronics dominates the textiles because the concept of flexible computation is not being exploited. So we manged to get some ERDF funding to team up with a local electronic component manufacturer to design resources to improve current e-textile teaching. It is important that any resources we create have integrity and promote the concept of electronic systems within the context of fashion. This presentation is about the evaluation we undertook to test our resources quality.
- #4 So, first we needed to identify the best way to learn the components of Smart fashion, which straight away means learning about electronic systems and how the structure of the system is dependent on the components. ….. Now this type of learning is said to be complex/abstract and difficult. This might be why our textile teachers prefer the pre-made kits option? So, we looked at the stuff Seymore Papert has written about learning computation. Constructionism and the idea of using objects to make abstract knowledge concrete. We also came across research carried out at MIT into the creation of soft components. Perner-Wilson and Buecheley (2013) refer to these as ‘a kit of no parts’ encouraging adult and teenage makers to construct switches and battery holders that expose the functionality of the materials – striping it back, so to say. This type of technology ‘laid bare’ enables learners to see what might be inside the black box, giving textile electronics an edge over traditional components.
- #5 So from this research we created a set of resources: a simple circuit tinkering kit a multimetre activity a soft switch kit a battery holder kit a set of exemplar Smart Fashion products
- #6 We then trialled these resources with a group of six teachers, through a professional development workshop held in April 2015
- #7 We set up a flexible design to collect the data for this part of the bigger case study. Qualitative data was collected from three of the teaching resources and interview transcripts created during a stimulated recall session set up at the end of the work shop
- #8 We wanted to build on existing research in order to give our evaluation rigor. So we looked at Jenny Rode working out of So looking at the resources and so in order to make this rigorous we For the deductive analysis used an emerging framework from Rhodes et al. In the framework they identified five factors in successful computational making teaching with teenagers in the States: aesthetics creativity constructing visualising multiple representations and understanding materials we used the factors as codes for our analysis, recording when instances of the framework occurred and interpreting this data against the descriptions.
- #9 We recorded instances of themes within each resource and then compared these to the teacher interviews to see how the teachers had responded to the activity. We are aware that our sample is small and so far we have only tested with teachers and not the pupils.
- #10 From this data we can see how the activities might provide opportunities for learners to experience and potentially understand Smart Fashion materials and components. This extends the Rode et al (2015) framework to include component understanding alongside materials. The teachers understood how the components interconnected and impacted on the circuit functionality (Peppler et al, 2013) this is essential knowledge for the types of design decisions that are required to design and make flexible Smart Fashion objects that will ultimately be worn next to the body.
- #11 From the data we can see that through the range of making skills, including the construction of pockets and encasing conductive fabric within pouches, the resources provide opportunities to support learners with the skills they need to house electronic circuit within Smart Fashion objects. However, opportunities to practice skills related to using conductive thread on the sewing machine are limited. Teacher D, identifies potential barriers to using the thread which supports the concern Ngai et al. (2010) pinpointed when describing the need to remove sewing from the initial stage of making.
- #12 From this study we can start to see that these teaching resources have the potential to support learners in developing an understanding of what e-textiles are and how they can be made. This understanding can then be applied, at a later date, through the designing and making of Smart Fashion products. For these teaching resources to be of quality they need to include opportunities for: abstract problem solving, the development of material and component understanding, experiences in construction techniques required for this kind of hybrid activity (integrated electronics and textiles), the visualisation of circuits, simple and advanced and group work to support competition and team work. The next steps in the research project will involve testing the remaining resources with teachers and conducting further enquiry into the social, creative and aesthetic aspects of e-textile learning.