We present the results of an
empirical study of elementary school classrooms and show how these
results informed the design of a mobile web application for teachers to
manage "digital economies" in their classrooms. A Classroom Economy is a
program that aims to teach financial literacy while encouraging focus
and on task behavior. The Digital Economy captures transaction data as
students participate in a Classroom Economy, replacing paper-based
transactions and record keeping. The design of the Digital Economy
application builds on our own prior work in which we partnered with
teachers to collaboratively design ubiquitous computing technologies for
classrooms. Our design is based on our analysis of classroom
observations, interviews with teachers, design workshops and a usability
study of a prototype application. We consider three major guidelines
for designing for classrooms: classroom flow, individual assessments, and peer groups.
We describe the negotiation of these guidelines when designing for the
management and curriculum goals of teachers. This case study
demonstrates how guidelines that emerged from the design research
process were negotiated in the development of this financial literacy
tool for classrooms.
IDC '13 Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Interaction Design and Children
IDC '13 Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Interaction Design and Children
