Talking Children and Tables: Conversation Styles of Children around Interactive and Non-Interactive Tables
Izdihar Jamil, Jason Alexander, Sriram Subramanian, Talking Children and Tables: Conversation Styles of Children around Interactive and Non-Interactive Tables. , University of Bristol. November 2009. PDF, 626 Kbytes.Abstract
Multi-touch interactive tables are becoming increasingly affordable and are likely to become commonplace in both schools and homes. Despite many advances in technology, interaction and co-located collaboration, there is little to no knowledge of how people communicate around these interactive tables. Communication is vital for humans as it is a necessary part of our everyday life and an important tool for humans to express themselves. This paper presents the findings of a study that observed the conversation styles of children working on interactive and non-interactive tables. We looked at five types of utterances: identification, proposals, responses, interdependence and instructions. We describe the implications of these results for designers of interactive tables for educational purposes.