Supporting children's collaboration across handheld computers

Abstract

This paper describes the use of multiple interconnected handheld devices to support children's collocated collaboration. Handhelds are a relatively inexpensive, highly mobile platform, making them potentially useful in educational settings [3]. Two shortcomings of students' use of handhelds are: 1) achieving the benefits of collaborative learning may be difficult given the personal nature of these devices, and 2) the small size of a PDA constrains the amount of information that can be meaningfully displayed. We address these shortcomings by utilizing multiple devices to form a larger surface that can display more information than any individual handheld. This interaction technique encourages collaboration and helps engage all students in the activity. To explore this style of collaboration, we extended an educational application with a shared screen information view that we call WHAT-IF1.