A little bit of coding goes a long way: Effects of coding on outdoor play

Netta Ofer, Tom Hitron, Hadas Erel, Oren Zuckerman, Idan David

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

6 Scopus citations

Abstract

Outdoor play has known benefits for children's development, and studies show it is in decline. Heads-Up Games have been proposed as a possible solution, in some cases with an integrated coding platform to enrich play variety. In this pilot study we set out to evaluate a Scratch-based coding platform for outdoor play. The code primitives control digital features of a stick-like outdoor play object. We observed children's play patterns with the coding platform and with the play object, and report on three distinct patterns: "Basic Exploration", "Advanced Exploration", and "Game Invention". Our preliminary findings show that all children began with "Basic Exploration" and progressed either to "Advanced Exploration" or "Game Invention". With regards to outdoor play benefits, the "Game Invention" pattern was associated with more collaborative social interaction, physical activity, and "heads up" interaction. We discuss the implications for future coding platforms designed for outdoor play.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationIDC 2018 - Proceedings of the 2018 ACM Conference on Interaction Design and Children
PublisherAssociation for Computing Machinery, Inc
Pages599-604
Number of pages6
ISBN (Electronic)9781450351522
DOIs
StatePublished - 19 Jun 2018
Externally publishedYes
Event17th ACM Conference on Interaction Design and Children, IDC 2018 - Trondheim, Norway
Duration: 19 Jun 201822 Jun 2018

Publication series

NameIDC 2018 - Proceedings of the 2018 ACM Conference on Interaction Design and Children

Conference

Conference17th ACM Conference on Interaction Design and Children, IDC 2018
Country/TerritoryNorway
CityTrondheim
Period19/06/1822/06/18

Keywords

  • Changing the rules
  • Children
  • Coding
  • Head-up games
  • Outdoor play.
  • Scratch

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Developmental and Educational Psychology
  • Education
  • Software
  • Human-Computer Interaction

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