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Information Systems (IS) among other Information Technology (IT) disciplines has been concerned with student recruitment while students in secondary education have little knowledge of the field and few end up choosing it as their career. We piloted an IS-oriented entrepreneurship course in a Finnish secondary school (aged 16‐19) to examine how we can change student understanding of the IS/IT field. We gathered data through observation, questionnaires, essays, and teacher interviews, and returned two years later for a follow-up inquiry on how the course lived on in the school. In this article, we examine what kind of value was created for the stakeholders and study the negotiation of meanings around the image of IS/IT by the students and the teacher. We contribute insights on the collaboration that serves as a form of marketing of IS education and point to factors that can affect the continued existence of this kind of course.

Prioritizing children’s empowerment in and through design has been on the agenda of child–computer interaction (CCI) research for a long time. Recently, the notion of the computational empowerment of children has received attention. However, there are still open issues in our understanding and advocacy of it. A related development is the recent interest in the longer-term impacts of our work. Fast and furious participation of children in design sessions is considered inadequate. We should advocate for longer-term trajectories and possibilities for children to make changes that will influence our world. However, the literature is limited in addressing longer-term impacts. This study taps into these two research gaps and showcases how we have addressed the computational empowerment of children in a project tackling bullying at school through critical design and making. In this paper, we examine in detail the children’s designs and their trajectories from the viewpoint of empowerment and impact: whether and how these children’s designs show potential for the empowerment of those bullied and whether and how their designs have had an impact in the realm of digital technology development. Our study has interesting conceptual and methodological implications for CCI research and practice on the computational empowerment of children and on our design research practice.

Mobile applications have thoroughly pervaded the lives of today’s children, who live and learn through and with them. However, limited research has been conducted on children designing such apps and not only using those designed by adults. Inviting children to design such apps is the focus of our study. Moreover, in contemporary society, it is emphasized that children should be empowered to take civic action and engage in making the world a better place. In the literature, however, less emphasis has been placed on how children can be invited to do so through the means of digital technology, particularly mobile application design. In this study, 13–15-year-old children are invited to take civic action to address the serious societal problem of bullying through the design of mobile apps. We discussed the design process and analyzed the applications the children designed from the viewpoint of how they aim to tackle bullying. We examined how their app designs aim at empowering other children in the context of bullying, and thus considered what kinds of opportunities emerge for children to learn skills related to the prevention or management of bullying in the apps they have designed. We showed that the children’s app designs informed us of the seriousness of bullying in children’s lives and that they advocate for the empowerment of other children in different ways. Hence, we have increased our understanding of how smart, interactive technologies designed by children address the learning and empowerment of other children, i.e., application users. We also studied the children’s learning from both their and their teachers’ perspectives. This study showcases an alternative way educators can integrate digital technologies and apps in school settings to educate children on important societal matters and digital technology.

Maker culture celebrates mistakes as an essential part of the process — reflecting on our failures promotes learning and understanding of the processes we work with. As researchers and practitioners organizing digital fabrication and making activities with children, we all know even the best laid plans can fail, or at least there is a chance that things do not go as expected. However, when reporting our activities, we tend to focus on success stories. As success is often built on learning from our mistakes, it is important to embrace and reflect on them as a community. In this workshop we invite researchers and practitioners to discuss the fortunate accidents made when working with children in digital fabrication and making projects, and to compile a set of short papers including lessons learned that are geared towards the researcher or practitioner entering the FabLearn community.

As our relationship with digital technology radically changes during this pandemic, it becomes imperative to reimagine new ways of interactions and collaborations. It is also important for children grow from passive consumers of digital technology to active designers and Makers. Typical research approaches for inquiring or probing children’s digital technology identities include interview-, reflection-, and hands-on creative-types of methods. But how will these methods fare in a future that is online or hybrid? In this paper, we present the outcomes of a workshop that employed critical design fiction with Child-Computer Interaction experts to speculate on how such methods can be applied in the future, in online or limited access scenarios, to study children’s designer and Maker identities. We focused on approaches that are empowering, albeit provocative. We call for researchers working with children to reconsider and expand their methods repertoire to keep in tune with the changing times.

2020 marks the beginning of a new era as the pandemic catapulted us into new digital and virtual ways of everyday life. As the world changes, we reimagine empowering, equitable, accessible, diverse, and inclusive digital futures, through a series of projects and workshops with a diverse set of participants — children in schools and Child Computer Interaction researchers. We conducted one long-term project with two schools in Finland and two one-day workshops with an international set of participants. Through an analysis of participants’ experiences and outcomes in the project and workshops, we build a case for diversity and inclusion through design fiction in the context of children’s education. In addition, through an analysis of the process we as researchers took for developing the project and workshops, we showcase the support of diversity and inclusion in design fiction.

Bullying is a serious problem concerning us all. The problem has already been tackled within HCI research, including different design and technology-based interventions, some of which strongly advocate human agency, social responsibility, action taking, and ownership for children. Along these lines, we address the problem of bullying in collaboration with children through critical design and Making. Critical and empowering approaches have aroused interest in child computer interaction (CCI) research, while we particularly explore Theatre of the Oppressed as a tool for evaluating design concepts with children and for empowering children to act as agents of change. Different theatre and drama-based methods have been utilized in CCI, while their potential for empowering children remains poorly explored. This study positions Theatre of the Oppressed within critical design and Making process, examines children’s experiences with it and scrutinizes in which sense it can be considered empowering, with implications for CCI research and design.

While the potential of digital fabrication, making, and entrepreneurship education for empowering children and for increasing their abilities to shape the society and our digital future have been acknowledged in the literature, these educational trends have mostly been studied separately in Child–Computer Interaction (CCI) research. Additionally, while digital fabrication and making have been discussed quite extensively in relation to the role of Design Protagonist in the CCI literature, the relevance of entrepreneurship education on this role remains quite unexplored. We combined digital fabrication, making, and entrepreneurship education in a business innovation project with teenagers at school context. Through our qualitative, interpretive analysis, where we use value co-creation as our theoretical lens, we show what kind of value was expected and gained in this collaborative endeavor. Teachers valued learning new teaching methods and the possibilities of digital fabrication. Teens appreciated the change in scenery and routine and working on digital fabrication. They indicated learning useful things about the project topics during groupwork and experienced feelings of success related to their performance and the group project. We also identify challenges hindering value creation for teachers and students: differing expectations on the roles and responsibilities of adult participants, and difficulty balancing the fun, free making activities with the entrepreneurship aspects of the project. We discuss the implications of business innovation for the Design Protagonist role of children and identify balancing acts needed when supporting children to adopt the role for driving business innovation in the future digitalized society.

Recently, there has been a large body of research exploring the possibilities of digital fabrication and making in school context. To truly embrace the spirit of equity and democracy so essential to the maker movement, more research is needed concerning how these activities can be used to empower marginalized and at-risk groups. In this paper, we introduce preliminary insights from Make4Change project, that aims to strengthen the social inclusion and employability of unemployed, young people and immigrants outside the labor market through digital fabrication and making. We use the criteria for empowerment of participants as a tool to reflect the planning, organization, and execution of learning activities and on improving our process moving forward. We believe that insights from Make4Change will be useful to practitioners and researchers looking to empower underrepresented, marginal, or at-risk populations through making.

The internet facilitates opportunities for adolescents to form relationships and explore their sexuality but seeking intimacy online has also become a stressor. As a result, adolescents often turn to the internet to seek support concerning issues related to sex because of its accessibility, interactivity, and anonymity. We analyzed 3,050 peer comments and 1,451 replies from adolescents (837 posts) who sought advice and/or support about online sexual experiences involving known others. We found peers mostly provided information and emotional support. They gave advice on how to handle negative online sexual experiences and mitigate their long-term repercussions, often based on their own negative experiences. They provided emotional support by letting teens know that they were not alone and should not blame themselves. A key implication of these findings is that these situations seemingly occurred regularly and youth were converging on a subset of norms about how to handle such situations in a way that supported one another. Yet, in some cases, they also resorted to victim-blaming or retaliating against those who broke these norms of “safe” sexting. Teens were grateful for emotional support and advice that helped them engage safely but were defensive when peers were critical of their relationships. Together, our findings suggest that youth are self-organizing to converge on guidelines and norms around safe sexting but have trouble framing their messages so that they are more readily accepted. In our paper, we contribute to the adolescent online safety literature by identifying youth-focused beliefs about safe sexting by analyzing the ways in which online peers give advice and support. We provide actionable recommendations for facilitating the exchange of positive advice and support via online peer-support platforms.

Previous literature highlights the importance of teaching children design and Making skills. However, there are fundamental differences in projects engaging children in design and Making, concerning the objects and motives of design. They vary depending on whether one emphasizes participatory design, user centered design, Making philosophy or entrepreneurship education, among others. In the first two, the emphasis is on the appreciation and engagement with the user, who is seen as separable from the designer. The third one often starts with solving one’s own problems while the fourth one prioritizes the customer. In this paper, we analyze the existing literature and three of our own design and Making projects with children. We reveal diversity in the projects reported in the literature and challenges among children in our projects in understanding the design goals and practices, particularly relating to designing for oneself versus designing for others. We propose a categorization for mapping and managing this diversity.

Information Systems (IS) among other Information Technology (IT) disciplines has been concerned with student recruitment, while high school students have little knowledge of what the field can offer. We piloted an IS oriented entrepreneurship course in a Finnish high school, with 24 students and their teacher. The purpose was to examine how we can change the students’ understanding of the IT field. The course consisted of information about the IT field and tasks that helped students develop a business idea and plan. During the course, we gathered data through observation, questionnaires and essays, and teacher interviews. We show what kind of value was created to the stakeholders and an example of resemiotisation of the image of IT, as students drew on their everyday experiences when making sense of the course and the IT field. Moreover, we present a concept of a university-high school collaboration course.

Ever younger children have their personal life online and there are worries of their online safety. To understand how children engage with and perceive online safety education targeted at them we arranged workshops with 11–12-year-old children who engaged with three existing educational packages for online safety targeted at children and brainstormed design recommendations for future education. We report the results of the workshops and further analyze the results using the lens of Schwartz’s theory of basic human values. Based on the analysis, we recommend that child–computer interaction designers and practitioners of online safety education acknowledge the following when developing educational packages on online safety for children’s use: considering both children’s and educators’ objectives and related values; integrating aspects of children’s own media culture; including more concrete advice; having a positive tone; and, engaging both children and teachers in the design and evaluation.

Eight polymorphic microsatellite loci were isolated from massively parallel next-generation sequencing data and tested in three populations (74 individuals) of the colonial freshwater bryozoan Fredericella sultana. Up to 13 alleles per locus were found and all loci were polymorphic in all populations. Minimum of three loci were sufficient to distinguish all unique multilocus genotypes. These highly variable markers are suitable for clonal identity assignment based on unique multilocus genotypes and provide tools for resolving fine scale population structure in a species characterised by clonal, vegetative growth and asexual reproduction

Children start to use the Internet ever-earlier, which is problematic as it has not been established that young children have the capacity to engage online safely. In this thesis I concentrate on how Finnish children aged 10–12 approach and enact online safety, how their online safety is mediated at home and in schools, and how this mediation could be supported. I use mostly qualitative data collection and analysis methods. I use Nexus analysis as my theoretical lens, as it suits research where focus is on complex social action. Children who participated in my research reported being skilled in online safety. They have confidence in their skills; as do parents and teachers, to a lesser extent. Children also mediate online safety within their own groups. At home, children’s Internet use is monitored and restricted, but parents favour active mediation such as talking and offering help. Technical parental controls are unpopular. To some extent, children and parents disagree on how much parental mediation is provided. In schools, restriction and monitoring are employed, e.g., concerning smartphones, but focus is on active mediation. Teachers believe the message is best received when tied to children’s experiences. Children say they like learning while doing, and hope for a positive tone and concrete advice from online safety education. Schools connect different actors in a dialogue concerning children’s online safety, but division of responsibilities seems blurry. Teachers feel alone in deciding how online safety is taught and wish for support. My results provide implications regarding how we design mediational means for ensuring children’s online safety. When mediating online safety, adults are balancing between necessary control, loving trust, and involvement. While some control is called for, I encourage adults to become involved in children’s online lives, and to build trusting relationships. To support online safety mediation at home, I suggest a combinati, Tiivistelmä Lapset aloittavat netinkäytön yhä nuorempana, mikä on ongelmallista, koska pienten lasten kyky toimia verkossa turvallisesti on vaillinaista. Väitöskirjassa tarkastelen kuinka suomalaiset 10–12-vuotiaat lapset lähestyvät nettiturvallisuutta, kuinka sitä toteutetaan kotona ja kouluissa ja kuinka nettiturvallisuuden toteuttamista voidaan tukea. Käytän tutkimuksessa pääosin laadullisia tiedonkeruu- ja analysointimetodeja. Teoreettisena linssinä käytän monimutkaisen sosiaalisen toiminnan tutkimiseen soveltuvaa neksusanalyysiä. Tutkimukseeni osallistuneet lapset suhtautuvat itse luottavaisesti taitoihinsa nettiturvallisuuden suhteen, kuten myös vanhemmat ja opettajat, joskin vähäisemmässä määrin. Lapset toteuttavat nettiturvallisuutta myös omissa ryhmissään. Kotona seurataan ja rajoitetaan lasten netinkäyttöä, mutta suositaan nk. aktiivista lähestymistapaa, kuten lapsille puhumista ja avun tarjoamista. Tekninen valvonta ei ole suosittua. Lapset ovat jossain määrin eri mieltä vanhempien kanssa siitä, kuinka paljon vanhemmat tukevat heidän nettiturvallisuuttaan. Kouluissa seurataan ja rajoitetaan mm. älypuhelinten käyttöä, mutta suositaan aktiivista lähestymistapaa. Opettajat uskovat lasten omaksuvan viestin parhaiten sidottuna omiin kokemuksiin. Lapset kertovat pitävänsä tekemällä oppimisesta. Opetukselta he toivovat positiivista sävyä ja konkreettisia neuvoja. Koulut yhdistävät toimijoita vuoropuheluun lasten nettiturvallisuudesta, mutta vastuunjako on epäselvää. Opettajat kokevat olevansa yksin päättämässä siitä, miten nettiturvallisuutta opetetaan ja he kaipaavat tukea. Tuloksillani on vaikutusta siihen, millaisia keinoja kehitämme lasten nettiturvallisuuden varmistamiseksi. Vaikka valvonta ja rajoitukset ovat joskus tarpeen, kannustan tarpeellisen valvonnan, rakastavan luottamuksen ja yhdessä tekemisen välillä tasapainoilevia aikuisia osallistumaan lasten nettielämään ja rakentamaan heihin luottamuksellisia välejä. Nettiturvallisuuden tukemiseksi kotona eh