Papers by Sawaros Thanapornsangsuth
Proceedings of the The 15th International Conference on Interaction Design and Children, 2016
Despite an explicit commitment to epistemic diversity, making and makerspaces have struggled to s... more Despite an explicit commitment to epistemic diversity, making and makerspaces have struggled to serve a diverse population of creators and have become heavily dominated by men. Drawing on the construct of "ways of knowing" from the feminist tradition the Bots for Tots project explores the affordances of activity framings and structures that tap into alternate mental dispositions to broaden participation and interest in maker activities. In this paper I present data from a workshop with 9-10 year olds explicitly framed to be about making toys for children in the community. I show that when making is framed as being a set of practices, skills, and technologies to give back to and support members of one's community, young girls were highly motivated to engage in the maker activity, persisted through construction challenges, and showed interest in further exploring making and technology to help others.
The goal of this short paper is to take an initial step in exploring a design framework that emph... more The goal of this short paper is to take an initial step in exploring a design framework that emphasizes making connections to students' community and creating relevant cultural connections to their constructionist learning experience. We present and illustrate our design framework using a case study of 4th graders at a low-income school in Bangkok, Thailand designing and building social innovations to solve problems in their community. Inspired by the late Thai King Bhumibol, who was the country's unifying figure and widely admired as "The Developer King," students made things that were personally and socially meaningful to their community. Students in this case were creative and innovative in their design effort and reflective of how their achievements doing things that are useful for others aligned with the spirit of King Bhumibol.
Many initiatives seek to engage children in maker education. However, there is a paucity of resea... more Many initiatives seek to engage children in maker education. However, there is a paucity of research examining children’s engagement in making in low-income formal school settings. Likewise, little work has been done to explore the transformative perspectives of both the children and the people around them. This study aims to explore a Culturally Relevant Constructionist Design framework that emphasizes making as a way of building connections to ones’ community. The participants’ shifting perspectives and receptivity in engaging in maker activities that involve making inventions for their community, inspired by the nation’s most beloved figure, King Bhumibol are evaluated.,This study investigates fourth-grade students, a teacher and community members around a public school in Thailand. Using qualitative research methods, data collection includes interviews, field notes observation, photos and videos of the sessions. This paper presents three case studies that represent the shifting ...
International Journal of Designs for Learning
As makerspaces and fabrication labs enter schools as a means of motivating children to explore ST... more As makerspaces and fabrication labs enter schools as a means of motivating children to explore STEM fields, the lack of diversity in engineering and computing must be addressed. The Bots for Tots project explores the potential of leveraging deeper values and perspectives in making practices by engaging young children in designing and creating objects for others rather than for themselves. In this design case, we present outcomes from the first Bots for Tots implementation highlighting key design challenges and tradeoffs for (a) encouraging a personal relationship between builders and clients while retaining design complexity, and (b) ensuring productive prototyping while providing materials and tools with which designers are familiar. We also discuss revisions for a second iteration where we leverage an existing mentorship program to ensure close designer-client relationships, and constrain material choices throughout the construction process to encourage participants to focus on fu...
This research presents two case studies on how human-centered design process can help the student... more This research presents two case studies on how human-centered design process can help the students find their purpose in making and designing in a constructionist learning-environment. Human-centered design guides students to deeper understanding of others' needs and encourages them to think and act collaboratively and creatively. When the students are making prototypes, they are creating objects-to-think-with, which enables them to express themselves, learn, explore and experiment with new knowledge and boundaries. The research is implemented through the Little Builders program, a month long four-day program in Bangkok, Thailand. Its design builds upon the constructionist framework with the support of human-centered design process, providing 8th grade students in a Thai urban school the opportunity to design and build social innovations as a team in an after school setting.
In this article, we suggest that we are witnessing a challenge to the hegemony of text-based know... more In this article, we suggest that we are witnessing a challenge to the hegemony of text-based knowledge in academic scholarship, brought about by newly available modes of expression, and a cultural shift in our notions of reading and writing, authorship, and networked knowledge production. The central question we address here concerns the implications of widening our ideas of acceptable forms of inquiry, analysis and representation in academic scholarship. As a collective of scholar-practitioners exploring new modes of expression and working both within and outside the formal structures of academia, we argue for the increasing significance of multimodal research in the contemporary context of academic inquiry. By more equitably valuing different ways of thinking, knowing and communicating, multimodal research can facilitate wider and more diverse participation in the production of knowledge, offer a more nuanced and ethical mode of inquiry, emphasize different ways of knowing and connecting, and make scholarship more broadly accessible beyond academic contexts. Here, we analyze the key opportunities facilitated by multimodal inquiry, as well as the obstacles that stand in the way of a wider adoption of this type of research in higher education.
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Papers by Sawaros Thanapornsangsuth