Design of the DigiSus aesthetic and digital experience rooms

Five DigiSus researchers and four project participants from kindergartens in Stord and Tysnes has been in New York on a DigSus working seminar to extend and elaborate on the co-operation with professor Alex Ruthman and his contacts at New York University and beyond. The seminar included elaboration on the design of the DigiSus aesthetic and digital experience rooms and a number of presentations from the DigiSus project for students and staff at Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development.

Presentations included:

Ingrid A. R. Grønsdal: DigiSus: A competence project for Building Sustainable Digital Practices in Kindergarten Literacy and Arts Programmes

Vigdis Vangsnes: Researching possible pedagogical positions when introducing digital technologies in early childhood education

Liv Ingrid Fjellanger: Introduction to pedagogies influencing Norway’s Kindergarten Teacher Education

Katrine Borgenvik: Investigating coding in Scratch for projecting children’s own drawings in sensory rooms

Ingrid A. R. Grønsdal, Martin Stensaker Rio, Maren Tislevoll Odland, Mariann Lie Helland, Ingrid Dalland Raa: Kindergarten practitioner reports: Making magic with Makey Makey,- possibilities and challenges when working with young children

Visits were also made to NYUs department at ‘Magnet’ in Brooklyn (http://magnet.nyu.edu/ ), to Childrens museum of Art (http://cmany.org/)and Tribecca Portofolio School (https://portfolio-school.org/) and Tribeca Community School (https://tribecacommunityschool.com/, which both build on a Reggio Emilia philosophy. One full day was used for the DigiSus group to connect with Tufts University (http://sites.tufts.edu/mbers01/ http://sites.tufts.edu/devtech/ ), and Marina Beers who is know for her co-creation of the internationally well known Scratch tool Jr (http://www.scratchjr.org/) in cooperation with Mitch Resnick at MIT Media Lab and Paula Bonta, from PICO. The rest of the program included a visit to Lifelong Kindergarten Lab and Eric Rosenbaum who has developed the Makey Makey tool, which has a central role in the DigiSus project, and a visit to Boston Children Museum.