Thinkeringspace: Designing for Collaboration (around the book and beyond)

Abstract

Innovation, collaboration and system thinking are increasingly recognized as skills that can be useful to children, and that can help ensure their success as citizens and workers in the 21st century. Seeking to improve opportunities for young people to develop abilities and competencies for the future and to narrow the complexity gap left by No Child Left Behind (the US federal law of 2001 that enacts the theories of standard-based education reform) when children are confronted with more conceptual thinking, a new genre of collaborative environments is being envisioned, called ThinkeringSpace. As a hybrid system of networked and remotely accessible physical environments, ThinkeringSpace seeks to inspire children to come together face-to-face to collaborate and tinker, reflect upon what they do and discover and elaborate their ideas in ways they can share with others. This paper gives an overview of the ThinkeringSpace system and its development. In addition, it discusses the process of designing for collaboration, whether face-to-face, stigmergic, online or hybrid, illustrating it with interactive prototype concepts.