Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://repository.isls.org//handle/1/2204
Title: Functional Aesthetics for Learning: Creative Tensions in Youth e-Textile Designs
Authors: Fields, Deborah A.
Kafai, Yasmin B.
Searle, Kristin
Issue Date: Jul-2012
Publisher: International Society of the Learning Sciences (ISLS)
Citation: Fields, D. A., Kafai, Y. B., & Searle, K. (2012). Functional Aesthetics for Learning: Creative Tensions in Youth e-Textile Designs. In van Aalst, J., Thompson, K., Jacobson, M. J., & Reimann, P. (Eds.), The Future of Learning: Proceedings of the 10th International Conference of the Learning Sciences (ICLS 2012) – Volume 1, Full Papers (pp. 196-203). Sydney, NSW, AUSTRALIA: International Society of the Learning Sciences.
Abstract: Most research in programming and engineering focuses on students' understanding of functionality as a way to gage their learning, leaving aside aesthetic dimensions. In our work with the LilyPad Arduino, an e-textile construction kit with controller, sensors and actuators that can be embedded via conductive thread and programmed in fabric and garments, we examine how functional aesthetics can play a productive or sometimes unproductive role in learning. Drawing from observations and interviews with 35 high school youth that created e-textile artifacts, we identified three different approaches ranging from giving up on desired designs to making something functional or not finishing or getting a design to work because of unwillingness to give up on aesthetics. We see the third approach, finding a new design that both meets aesthetic desires and matches affordances of the technologies, as particularly promising approach and discuss how aesthetic dimensions can provide important connections in learning.
URI: https://doi.dx.org/10.22318/icls2012.1.196
https://repository.isls.org//handle/1/2204
Appears in Collections:ICLS 2012

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