Abstract:

Playing is probably one of the oldest and most natural ways to learn. Compared to the excitement, unpredictability and fun of playing, most of the current educational tools, as well as the research thereof, emphasize issues like efficiency, reuse, and reliability. Most of the young learners would use just one word to describe the state-of-art: it is boring. Playing, on the other hand, opens the realm of the unknown, encourages to explore and even to fight for making sense of one's context. The Kids' Club, hosted at the Department of Computer Science of the University of Joensuu in Finland, mimics a piazza where diverse learners, graduate students, R&D experts from companies, and, hopefully in the future, grandparents play together under thematic umbrellas - like that of a copper mine - and use modern digital and robotic tools to create common understanding in a concrete way. The idea of Kids' Clubs, or university hosted technology piazzas, has attracted interest particularly in developing countries and special education. We are looking forward to establishing a network of KC hubs to reflect the diverse colors of our global learning community.
 

Biographical Information:

Professor Erkki Sutinen (Ph.D. in computer science) is the leader of the educational technology research group (http://cs.joensuu.fi/edtech) at the University of Joensuu, Finland. His research interests include ICT education in developing countries, learning tools like visualization and digital portfolios, cultural factors of educational technology, computer science education, and information retrieval/string algorithms. He is a program committee member in several international conferences, and has in the past few years regularly launched initiatives to promote educational technology from the computer science perspective. He has served as a frequent speaker at international and national courses and tutorials, and is a co-author in more than 100 research papers. For the time being, he leads several research projects.