Children, robotics, and education

Popular interest in robotics has increased astonishingly in the last few years. Robotics is seen by many as offering major new benefits in education at all levels. Before rushing to exploit this popularity, educators should ask serious questions about the universality and longevity of the robotics phenomenon. Is it a fashion? To be useful, the energy released by robotics must be sustained and universal, and the means of exploiting it must be systematic. Universities define their own robotics curriculum, but most schools lack both the resources and the freedom to do this, and must work with a national curriculum. If it can be shown that robotics has sustained potential in education, it seems inevitable that new ways need to be found to integrate it into the school curriculum.     

Groupwork and computers: task type and children's performance

Abstract In the majority of British primary schools, children use the computer in groups of two or three. This is partly due to the lack of resources, that is, most classrooms still only have one or two computers to share between around 30 children. Groupwork on computers is also justified for pedagogic reasons. Previous research comparing children working in groups or alone has revealed an advantage for children working in groups although the work undertaken has generally been problem solving tasks. This investigation examined the performance of pairs and individual 6-year old children on a drill and practice program using a pre-test, intervention, post-test design. In comparison to the problem solving evidence, individuals were found to have a significant advantage over pairs during the computer-based task.     

“恋衣狂”张爱玲的服装设计艺术

张爱玲是现代中国自称为"恋衣狂"的仙才作家。她不仅是我国服装文化的研究者,也是身体力行的实践者。她中西交融、化俗为雅、参差对照、猎求奇异和贵族化情结的服装设计艺术,与她的小说《传奇》一样,已成为人们永远讲不完的神话故事。     

Toward a model for the study of children’s informal Internet use

Throughout history, the development and widespread use of new technologies has impacted human cognition and social structures. By integrating a range of cognitive and socio-cultural theories we are better able to understand the impact of technological tools, such as the Internet, on children in the context of their local and global communities. An integrated theoretical approach enables us to more comprehensively ascertain the potential of the Internet to significantly impact children’s cognitive processes and the larger social implications of this global phenomenon. This paper presents a small-scale exploratory study that, through the development of an Internet-mediated learning model, examines the skills and characteristics of young, competent Internet-users engaged in informal Internet activities. At present, there is much conjecture on the ways in which the Internet may affect learning and this paper describes an approach to research that could inform future data collection procedures and analysis in empirical studies.     

我国童装设计的现状分析及应对策略初探

儿童的问题已经引起国人的日益关注,而我国童装业起步较晚,存在着各种问题,文章分析了我国童装设计中存在的主要问题及原因,在此基础上,结合童装的特点,提出了若干应对策略。     

品味童装——看图案设计在童装中的应用

图案是所有设计专业的学生在学校学习时所必修的一门专业基础课。纵观中华五千年的文明,哪一朝哪一代都有自己独特的图案风格。那么,在今天的图案设计特别是儿童服装的图案设计与应用中,怎样为孩子营造一个童话的世界,展现孩子的童真与童趣?一名优秀的童装图案设计师,应该充分利用自然环境,社会环境,民族心理和传统文化结构所赋予的条件,来解决这个问题,从而构思出独特完美而富有表现力的童装图案设计作品。     

When are Personal Technologies for Children?

This paper will discuss the various issues surrounding personal technologies for children. Three critical questions will be discussed: Why can technology be important for children? What activities can technology support? And what changes should be considered for the future?     

居住区儿童活动场所景观设计探讨

儿童活动场所的景观作为居住区整体景观形象的重要组成部分,不仅仅是简单的表面美化的设计,更重要的是对居住区儿童生理和心理需求方面的满足。依据以人为本的设计理念,针对当前居住区儿童景观设计的发展情况进行反思与探讨,以期引起更多的人们对于儿童这个特殊群体的关注,创造适宜他们健康成长的场所景观。     

Learning from designing the RoboFesta—Blue Peter robots

Can children and adults learn anything from building robots? In 2001 we ran a robot design competition with the BBC TelevisionBlue Peter, program. Some 32 000 children, aged between 5 and 16 years, submitted paper designs. We built prototypes of the four winners' robots for a Robot Design MasterClass at the London Science Museum. It is widely believed that across the curriculum, robotics is a powerful force in motivating education. We ask what the children learned from the robot design process. Our answer is that they learned many things, both inside and outside the science and technology curriculum.     

Generalized notions of mind change complexity

Gold introduced the notion of learning in the limit where a class S is learnable iff there is a recursive machine M which reads the course of values of a function f and converges to a program for f whenever f is in S. An important measure for the speed of convergence in this model is the quantity of mind changes before the onset of convergence. The oldest model is to consider a constant bound on the number of mind changes M makes on any input function; such a bound is referred here as type 1. Later this was generalized to a bound of type 2 where a counter ranges over constructive ordinals and is counted down at every mind change. Although ordinal bounds permit the inference of richer concept classes than constant bounds, they still are a severe restriction. Therefore the present work introduces two more general approaches to bounding mind changes. These are based on counting by going down in a linearly ordered set (type 3) and on counting by going down in a partially ordered set (type 4). In both cases the set must not contain infinite descending recursive sequences. These four types of mind changes yield a hierarchy and there are identifiable classes that cannot be learned with the most general mind change bound of type 4. It is shown that existence of type 2 bound is equivalent to the existence of a learning algorithm which converges on every (also nonrecursive) input function and the existence of type 4 is shown to be equivalent to the existence of a learning algorithm which converges on every recursive function. A partial characterization of type 3 yields a result of independent interest in recursion theory. The interplay between mind change complexity and choice of hypothesis space is investigated. It is established that for certain concept classes, a more expressive hypothesis space can sometimes reduce mind change complexity of learning these classes. The notion of mind change bound for behaviourally correct learning is indirectly addressed by employing the above four types to restrict the number of predictive errors of commission in finite error next value learning (NV′′)—a model equivalent to behaviourally correct learning. Again, natural characterizations for type 2 and type 4 bounds are derived. Their naturalness is further illustrated by characterizing them in terms of branches of uniformly recursive families of binary trees.