COLLABORATIVE MAJOR Computational Textiles as Materials for Creativity: Participatory Design Communities in Afterschool and Classroom Programs for Economically-Disadvantaged Youth

由计算机科学家，艺术和计算机科学教育工作者以及来自宾夕法尼亚大学，麻省理工学院和印第安纳州大学的学习科学家组成的多学科团队正在研究如何鼓励大约400名青少年（10-18岁）在课后和学校环境中创造性地参与计算纺织品。计算纺织品？是由计算机生成的纺织品还是包含嵌入式计算机的纺织品？会抓住年轻人吗在支持计算机科学、艺术、设计和工程方面的学习和创造力的同时，PI正在为3D纺织品设计一个新的编程工具包，以促进创造力，并在课后和课堂课程的不同研讨会环境中学习这些工具。虽然以前的努力集中在为新手开发2D和3D编程环境，但他们的目标是将这些努力扩展到包括3D纺织品设计，以吸引通常不参与计算的弱势青年。此外，他们正在开发一个开放的，参与式的网站，让年轻人展示他们创造的文物，分享，讨论和混合他们的设计。这些努力建立在我们之前成功开发Scratch在线社区的基础上，该社区现在拥有超过10，000名设计师。他们正在与当地的青年社区和来自各种背景的专业顾问合作，以确定和鼓励创造性的设计解决方案，作为他们努力建立这个社区的一部分，这是有史以来第一个计算纺织设计师的青年社区。（1）一个用于构建计算纺织品的构建工具包，称为LilyPad Arduino，首次使该领域广泛使用;（2）研究一个媒体丰富的编程环境，Scratch，这是由所有年龄段的设计师的全球社区使用;和（3）媒体艺术在K-12教育的概念框架，描述和分析创造性的数字生产。的系统模型（1988年，1997年），PI定义创造力作为个人之间的动态互动？的贡献领域和社区内的认可领域。为了研究创造力的不同组成部分作为一个系统，这个项目的重点是技术，艺术和关键的做法，在青年？设计和互动，并采用了各种评估方法，包括混合方法的数据分析记录组互动，与青年设计师和专业艺术家的访谈，设计师和文物的案例研究，以及日志文件数据跟踪在线社区参与和评论。智力优点：这个项目提出了一个新的机会，研究创造力在一个新兴的IT领域（即，计算纺织品及其应用），并将有助于创造力的研究，提供经验验证帐户的系统性质的创造力之间的互动，个人设计师和社区的反馈。此外，他们还在开发工具，用于定制编程以支持3D纺织品设计，研究用于共享和验证创意计算纺织品设计的在线社区，并为新手程序员研究计算纺织品设计车间模型中的学习方法。建议的工具和活动为弱势社群的青少年提供更多机会，让他们透过设计计算增强的材料和文物，并以有意义的方式有助于计算纺织品设计的新兴领域。实施和评估是在课后地点举办的讲习班上进行的，这些地点在技术经验上各不相同，以便更广泛地传播所开发的工具和活动。在专业发展会议上与青年协调员分享工作结果，在国家会议上介绍，并在学术期刊和网站上进一步传播。

Multidisciplinary teams composed of computer scientists, arts and computer science educators, and learning scientists from the University of Pennsylvania, MIT and Indiana University are researching how to encourage about 400 youth (ages 10-18) to creatively engage with computational textiles in afterschool and school settings. Computational textiles?textile artifacts that are computationally generated or that contain embedded computers?will capture youths? pre-existing interests in new media, fashion, and design while supporting learning and creativity in computer science, arts, design, and engineering.The PIs are designing a new programming toolkit for 3D textile design to promote creativity and to study these tools in different workshop settings in afterschool and classroom programs. While previous efforts have focused on developing environments for 2D and 3D programming for novices, their goal is to expand these efforts to include 3D textile design to appeal to disadvantaged youth not normally drawn into computing. Moreover, they are developing an open, participatory website that allows youth to display their created artifacts and share, discuss, and remix their designs. These efforts build on our prior successes developing an online community around Scratch, which now hosts over 10,000 designers. They are engaging local youth communities and professional advisors from a variety of backgrounds to identify and encourage creative design solutions as part of their efforts to build this community, the first-ever youth community of computational textile designers.The proposal leverages several successful developments: (1) a construction kit for building computational textiles called the LilyPad Arduino that makes this domain widely accessible for the first time; (2) research on a media-rich programming environment, Scratch, that is used by a worldwide community of designers of all ages; and (3) a conceptual framework of media arts in K-12 education that describes and analyzes creative digital production.Using Csikszentmihalyi?s system model (1988, 1997), the PIs define creativity as the dynamic interaction between an individual?s contributions to a domain and community recognition within the field. To investigate the different components of creativity as a system, this project focuses on the technical, artistic and critical practices in youth? designs and interactions and employs a variety of assessment approaches including mixed methods data analyses of recorded group interactions, interviews with youth designers and professional artists, case studies of designers and artifacts, and log file data tracking online community participation and commentaries.Intellectual Merit: This project presents a novel opportunity to study creativity within an emergent IT field (i.e., computational textiles and their applications) and will contribute to creativity research by providing empirically validated accounts of the system nature of creativity captured in interactions between individual designers and community feedback. Furthermore, they are developing tools for how to tailor programming to support 3D textile design, investigate an online community for sharing and validating creative computational textile designs, and investigate learning approaches in workshop models for computational textiles design for novice programmers.Broader Impact: The proposed tools and activities broaden opportunities for youth from disadvantaged communities to develop advanced IT fluency skills by designing computationally enhanced materials and artifacts and contribute in meaningful ways to the emergent field of computational textile design. The implementation and assessment is conducted in workshops at after school sites that vary strategically in their technology experience to allow for a broader dissemination of the developed tools and activities. The findings from the work is shared with youth coordinators at professional development meetings, is presented at national conferences, and is disseminated further in academic journals and through their website.