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[EN] Gamification has been identified as an interesting technique to foster collaboration in educational contexts. However, there are not many approaches that tackle this in primary school learning environments. The most popular technologies in the classroom are still traditional video consoles and desktop computers, which complicate the design of collaborative activities since they are essentially mono-user. The recent popularization of handheld devices such as tablets and smartphones has made it possible to build affordable, scalable, and improvised collaborative gamifled activities by creating a multi-tablet environment. In this paper we present Quizbot, a collaborative gamifled quiz application to practice different subjects, which can be defined by educators beforehand. Two versions of the system are implemented: a tactile for tablets laid on a table, in which all the elements are digital; and a tangible in which the tablets are scattered on the floor and the components are both digital and physical objects. Both versions of Quizbot are evaluated and compared in a study with eighty primary-schooled children in terms of user experience and quality of collaboration supported. Results indicate that both versions of Quizbot are essentially equally fun and easy to use, and can effectively support collaboration, with the tangible version outperforming the other one with respect to make the children reach consensus after a discussion, split and parallelize work, and treat each other with more respect, but also presenting a poorer time management., We would like to thank Universitat Politecnica de Valencia's Summer School for their collaboration during the development of this study, as well as Colegio Internacional Ausias March for their support in the development of educational content., This work is supported by Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness and funded by the European Development Regional Fund (EDRF-FEDER) with Project TIN2014-60077-R. It is also supported by fellowship ACIF/2014/214 within the VALi+d program from Conselleria d’Educació, Cultura i Esport (Generalitat Valenciana), and by fellowship FPU14/00136 within the FPU program from Spanish Ministry of Education, Culture, and Sport

This work introduces a Multi-Display Environment (MDE) based on handheld devices to build tabletop-like experiences in an affordable, scalable, and simple way to foster collaboration in educational settings.

Entertainment technology increases children’s engagement in educational activities designed to develop abilities ranging from collaborative problem-solving and cognitive attention to self-esteem. However, little research has been done on designing educational and entertaining interactive technology for kindergarten children (up to 5 years old). Furthermore, most of the work in this area has considered traditional input devices such as the mouse and keyboard, which are not suitable for these very young children. More recently, other more intuitive means of interaction (touch and tangible interfaces) and advanced educational artifacts such as robots have emerged. In this work we therefore present a joint collaboration between technologists and kindergarten instructors to design and evaluate a technological platform using a mobile robot for kindergarten instruction, as well as an intuitive and user-friendly tangible user interface. The results obtained suggest the platform is not only usable by kindergarten children, but it also allows them to be fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of the activity. In addition, the instructors reported that the system was well accepted and praised its versatility in use as a supporting tool for their everyday classroom activities., This work is funded by the European Development Regional Fund (EDRF-FEDER) and supported by Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness with Project TIN2014-60077-R, and from Universitat Politècnica de València under Project UPV-FE-2014-24. It is also supported by fellowship ACIF/2014/214within the VALi+d program from Conselleria d’Educació, Cultura i Esport (Generalitat Valenciana), and by fellowship FPU14/00136 within the FPU program from Spanish Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport.

Pre-kindergarten children are becoming frequent users of multi-touch technology and, according to previous studies they are able to perform several multi-touch gestures successfully. However, they do not use these devices supervised at all times. Consequently, interactive applications for pre-kindergarteners need to convey their underlying design intent and interactive principles with respect to touch interaction. In this paper, we present and evaluate two approaches to communicate three different touch gestures (tap, drag and scale up) to pre-kindergarten users. Our results show, firstly, that it is possible to effectively communicate them using visual cues and, secondly, that an animated semiotic approach is better than an iconic one., Work supported by the MINECO (grant TIN2010-20488) and GVA VALi+d program (grant APOSTD/2013/013).

Multi-touch technology provides users with a more intuitive way of interaction. However, pre-kindergarten children, a growing group of potential users, have problems with some basic gestures according to previous studies. This is particularly the case of the double tap and long pressed gestures, which have some issues related to spurious entry events and time-constrained interactions, respectively. In this paper, we empirically test specific strategies to deal with these issues by evaluating off-the-shelf implementations of these gestures against alternative implementations that follow these guidelines. The study shows that the implementation of these design guidelines has a positive effect on success rates of these two gestures, being feasible their inclusion in future multi-touch applications targeted at pre-kindergarten children., This work received financial support from the Spanish Ministry of Education under the National Strategic Program of Research and Projects TIN2010-20488 (CREATEWORLD) and TIN2012-34003 (insPIre). This work is also supported by a postdoctoral fellowship within the VALi+d program from Conselleria d’Educació, Cultura i Esport (Generalitat Valenciana) to A. Catalá (APOSTD/2013/013).