We see a global decline in the ability and the quality of children’s handwriting. Children have swapped their pencils and papers to digital alternatives both at home and in school. However the reason this is a problem is that recent research proves how vital and beneficial the writing by hand process is for the development of the child. The process increases brain activity to a level similar that of adults but it also acts as a filter when processing information which benefits the memory. The implication of the results of the research is that the pen as a tool still has an important role to play in the digital classroom and the society of tomorrow. With this problem formulation I wanted to create a concept which would give an incentive for children to learn how to write by hand in the digital classroom. The conclusion I reached after talking to kids, teachers and experts as well as observing them in their context was that the process of learning how to write by hand is far from equal as well as time-consuming in comparison how fast a child learns how to operate a touch-screen or a keyboard. Similar to learning how to ride a bike, play a sport or instrument getting help could become crucial to the learning process. The goal of the concept is to provide training wheels for children when they learn how to write by hand. The result is the concept the Owl; it’s a tablet device for children combined with a mechanical aid that will help children learn how to write by hand by demonstrating, stabilizing and correcting the pen in the physical world. The help would gradually decrease as the child gets more prominent with the pen and eventually become obsolete. The tool will increase the equality of the learning and it will make the skill both easier and faster to acquire so that it can compete with tools such as the keyboard. In the end the child will gain the confidence necessary to work to use the pen independently with digital and traditional mediums.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:umu-110326 |
| Date | January 2015 |
| Creators | Östman, Ludwig |
| Publisher | Umeå universitet, Designhögskolan vid Umeå universitet |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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