I was excited to share our new pictorial at #IDC2023 featuring photo-visuals from Family Creative Learning to share visuals as "knowledge-building artifacts": "Imagining Alternative Visions of Computing: Photo-Visuals of Material, Social, and Emotional Contexts from Family Creative Learning" https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3585088.3589235

Thank you so much to the entire #IDC2023 team that gave us such a great conference! I had missed this conference and am so glad I came this year. Hope to get together again next year, in Delft, the Netherlands! ❤️

The final social event of #IDC2023 was the widely-recommended Chicago River Architecture Tour, and it did not disappoint!!

However, Dr. Kirkorian during Q&A noted that more recent studies are showing that kids are exhibiting less of this so-called "video deficit" as they are growing up more familiar with screens. For tasks that are harder cognitively, though, the video deficit still happens. #IDC2023

Dr. Heather Kirkorian showed us research that found kids up to five years of age are worse at understanding information they see in video than in real life, which seems to have interesting implications for screen time and Baby Einstein etc. Interactivity in the experience can improve their understanding; however, STORIES have the real power since "real-world learning is interactive, dynamic, and messy." #IDC2023

It's fascinating that child development research shows that kids learn more education content from story-based educational videos when they understand more about the STORY (e.g., narrative content). But there's no effect when just the education content is emphasized for them. Great keynote by Dr. Heather Kirkorian at #IDC2023

Last but not least is the closing keynote for #IDC2023 -- Dr. Heather Kirkorian, an expert on child psychology and developmental science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, speaking on early learning in the digital age. So important to remember how our work in child-computer interaction affects and is affected by child development in the real world. https://childdevelopmentlab.wisc.edu/staff/kirkorian-heather/

One of the best and most unique aspects of the IDC conference is the Research & Design Challenge which solicits design ideas and solutions from kids themselves around a different theme each year. The theme for #IDC2023 was "how can smart machines help create more compassion within our communities?" 1/2

Post lunch today at #IDC2023 included some of the applications I found most compelling, in multisensory learning. Nice to see some multimodal research here!

Three super interesting robot-based applications for kids and their families were presented this morning before lunch at #IDC2023 and all three were from Bilge Mutlu's group at U Wisconsin-Madison!

I loved the insightful four-level hierarchy of design considerations for children's well-being that Alexis Hiniker's group @UW identified from their interviews with design practitioners: safety, usability, education/learning, meaning; from the most basic to the aspirational. And design approaches varied by the designer's (or company's) attitude toward children's autonomy. #IDC2023

The first session of the last full day of #IDC2023 started with a full slate of papers on children's online or digital well-being, from a data privacy, literacy, and design perspective.

Gorgeous views near the Chicago Architecture Center for last night's reception at #IDC2023 😍

There's not one but TWO sessions on STEAM tools for learning at #IDC2023 this year!! ❤️

The third talk in this session was presented remotely and it went very smoothly! #IDC2023 has really been a super streamlined example of a hybrid conference that I think other conferences could learn from. If you were a remote participant, how did you feel about it?

The third and fourth talks in this session at #IDC2023 included a team from MIT who presented on designing trustworthy CAs* based on input from both kids and parents, and Janet Read's team discussing how kids in Nepal and the UK used an app based on Google Translate to talk together. 2/2

*conversational agents

This morning's 2nd session at #IDC2023 included four talks on conversational agents/NLP* and kids. A cross-institutional team from Michigan and Irvine found that, for bilingual kids, agents must be bilingual for both reading and interacting, as kids tend to use both languages interchangeably. A team from UW (including my co-author Alexis Hiniker!) used CAs to help kids steer their self-talk in a more positive "superhero" direction rather than negative direction. 1/2

*natural language processing

This morning's first session at #IDC2023 was on Computational and Data Literacy for kids. Important topic in today's "surveillance capitalism" landscape (term overheard here and resonates so much with me).

All work and no play? Spent the evening last night at Second City Mainstage for sketch comedy/improv. Nice opportunity to see a cultural icon while in Chicago for #IDC2023 🙂

I'm at #IDC2023 this week. We are presenting a couple of papers from our group during the "Computational & Data Literacy" session tomorrow (Wednesday), starting at 9:00 AM.

Blog post on the first paper: https://depts.washington.edu/ledlab/blog/2023/idc-23-dataland/

Blog post on the second paper: https://depts.washington.edu/ledlab/blog/2023/idc-23-critical-data-literacies-review/