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家以及来自宾夕法尼亚大学、麻省理工学院和印第安纳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。计算纺织品吗?纺织制品是由计算机生成的还是包含嵌入式计算机的？会俘获年轻人吗？对新媒体、时尚和设计有兴趣，同时支持计算机科学、艺术、设计和工程方面的学习和创造力。pi正在为3D纺织品设计设计一个新的编程工具包，以促进创造力，并在课后和课堂项目的不同车间环境中研究这些工具。虽然之前的努力主要集中在为新手开发2D和3D编程环境，但他们的目标是扩大这些努力，包括3D纺织品设计，以吸引通常不被计算机吸引的弱势青年。此外，他们正在开发一个开放的、参与性的网站，让年轻人可以展示他们创造的文物，分享、讨论和重新组合他们的设计。这些努力建立在我们之前成功开发的Scratch在线社区的基础上，该社区现在拥有超过10,000名设计师。他们正在与来自不同背景的当地青年社区和专业顾问合作，以确定和鼓励创造性的设计解决方案，作为他们建立这个社区的努力的一部分，这是有史以来第一个计算机纺织设计师的青年社区。该提案利用了几个成功的发展：(1)用于构建称为LilyPad Arduino的计算纺织品的构建套件，使该领域首次广泛访问；(2)研究一个富媒体的编程环境，Scratch，这个环境被全世界所有年龄的设计师社区所使用；(3) K-12教育中媒体艺术的概念框架，描述和分析创造性的数字生产。使用米?在s的系统模型（1988,1997）中，pi将创造力定义为个体与个体之间的动态互动。S对一个领域的贡献和该领域内的社区认可。为了研究创造力作为一个系统的不同组成部分，本项目侧重于青年的技术、艺术和批判实践。设计和互动，并采用各种评估方法，包括混合方法数据分析记录的群体互动，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。智力价值：该项目为在新兴IT领域（即计算纺织品及其应用）中研究创造力提供了一个新的机会，并将通过在个体设计师和社区反馈之间的互动中提供经验验证的创造力系统性质的描述，从而为创造力研究做出贡献。此外，他们正在开发如何定制编程以支持3D纺织品设计的工具，调查在线社区以共享和验证创造性的计算纺织品设计，并研究为新手程序员提供计算纺织品设计的车间模型的学习方法。更广泛的影响：建议的工具和活动拓宽了来自弱势社区的年轻人的机会，通过设计计算增强的材料和人工制品来发展先进的IT流畅性技能，并以有意义的方式为新兴的计算纺织品设计领域做出贡献。实施和评估是在课后地点的讲习班中进行的，这些地点的技术经验在战略上各不相同，以便更广泛地传播开发的工具和活动。工作结果在专业发展会议上与青年协调员分享，在国家会议上提出，并在学术期刊及其网站上进一步传播。

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.