Fröbel – EDUC 342: Child Development & New Technologies

Week 4 Response—Shelley

mwill5 — Thu, 28 Jan 2016 06:54:54 +0000

I was drawn to the article by Kafai et al. because I remember, quite clearly, my love of Barbie Fashion Designer when it came out in 1996. I was struck by the line, “Seemingly against conventional wisdom, it demonstrated that girls could be interested in using computers.” (2) This observation speaks to the depth to the stereotype of girls and technology, as the medium itself is hardly subversive—my sister and I spent countless hours picking patterns, colors, and templates of skirts and dresses for our avatar’s “dream date.” The program requires very little technical knowledge beyond the ability to click on different outfits or color swatches.

Kafai et al. piqued my nostalgic interest, but the argument they pose in connecting textile construction kits like Barbie Fashion Designer to Fröbel’s gifts doesn’t seem entirely apt. Fröbel seems to suggest that the mechanics of crafting—sewing, blocks, clay—are tactile forms of play in which children can use creativity to learn. The inclusion of Frank Lloyd Wright and Lincoln Logs illustrates this concept; he was gaining an awareness of the applied math and physics of architecture while building log structures. The physical experience he had of stacking the logs onto each other, as well as the creative freedom to create whatever he wanted within the confines of physics, is a powerful medium for learning.

Though Barbie Fashion Designer can certainly be considered a context in which children can be creative to an extent, its users are given pre-programmed options and limited outcomes, and the physical experience that seems critical to Fröbel is dramatically reduced. (I remember printing out my designs very rarely; once I had completed the design, I no longer felt as compelled to engage with it. If I did print it, assembly was very simple.) Through my own experience with this tool, I think Kafai et al. drastically overestimate how much learning and actual textile construction happens as a result of using this software.

DQC – Week 4 – Betsy Anderson

eanders7 — Wed, 27 Jan 2016 20:41:47 +0000

While reading Fröbel’s Forgotten Gift I did not get the impression that any of the 20 toys and activities he created had distinctively male or female features. All of the toys and activities seemed to be fairly gender-neutral and over time have inspired very gender specific toys like Legos and sewing activities.

In Barbie Girls and Xtractaurs: Discourse and Identity in Virtual Worlds for Young Children, it was incredibly disheartening to read about the language disparities between Barbie Girls and Xtractuars. I remember often playing with toys aimed at girls as a child, and now I wonder what I may have missed that my brother was learning while he playing with toys aimed at boys.

What would it require for toy companies to create only gender neutral toys? Would that have positive or negative results? Maybe both? Are there potential unintended consequences of creating only gender neutral toys? Or, rather than gender neutral toys, how could we persuade toy companies to provide boys and girls with equal academic experiences through their gender specific toys?

Week 4: Fröbel’s Forgotten Gift

ccolgan — Mon, 25 Jan 2016 08:00:19 +0000

In reading “Fröbel’s Forgotten Gift…,” I couldn’t help but remember Barbie Fashion Designer from my own childhood. I didn’t own the game, but I begged my friend Victoria to play whenever I was at her house. As I recall, it was a fairly open-ended design project, though firmly within the Barbie world of “Dream Date” and “Party Surprise.” We would spend many hours debating our choices, but limited by the technology of the time, there was no way to share out with a larger community. Unfortunately, as mentioned in the article, the starter kit came with only eight sheets of the special paper needed to print out the clothes and as a result, we printed an actual outfit exactly one time. The material was far too precious to use up on an inferior costume. Usually we only played on the digital interface, losing the important step of creating a tangible finished product, something that separated the game from other platforms like Barbie Girls, the focus of the Rebecca W. Black article.

Since crafts in general and fashion specifically are so deeply tied to the female realm, I started wondering about ways that textile construction could move into a less gendered space. A tool like the LilyPad Arduino seemed like a promising way to make “soft wear” more universal, but a quick Google search revealed that the “LilyPond” website is no longer active and there seems to be little news from the formal community. Considering the long history of embroidery and sewing long before Fröbel, it seems unlikely that it will disappear in the future, but a great game, platform, and most importantly, an active community, could go a very long way in supporting more widespread adoption.