TanPro-kit: a tangible programming tool for children

D Wang, Y Qi, Y Zhang, T Wang - Proceedings of the 12th International …, 2013 - dl.acm.org
D Wang, Y Qi, Y Zhang, T Wang
Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Interaction Design and …, 2013dl.acm.org
This paper describes a new tangible programming tool---TanPro-Kit which was designed for
children aged 5 to 9. It consists of programming blocks and a LED pad. The LED pad
presents visual animations and audible feedback according to the arrangement of blocks
with which children make program to play a maze game. Aiming at lowering the cost of
TanPro-Kit, we adopted LED, RFID, wireless and infrared technology to develop the whole
system. The system acquires the programming blocks' physical information which is then …
This paper describes a new tangible programming tool--- TanPro-Kit which was designed for children aged 5 to 9. It consists of programming blocks and a LED pad. The LED pad presents visual animations and audible feedback according to the arrangement of blocks with which children make program to play a maze game. Aiming at lowering the cost of TanPro-Kit, we adopted LED, RFID, wireless and infrared technology to develop the whole system. The system acquires the programming blocks' physical information which is then translated into programming semantic. TanPro-Kit is low-cost, which is more acceptable in developing countries. We ran a user study with 16 children involved, which showed TanPro-Kit to be attractive to children and easy to learn and use.
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