Dance Interaction is an augmented wearable learning environment for children.

The system

The sensors understand the position of children in the room, the class environment for instance, and how the children are interacting with their friends, and transmit this location to the computer, into which the Dance Interaction software is running. The children program the software through a very simple interface and see the effects that their physical interaction through the clothes has on the rhytm of the music they are playing or on the clothes of their friends.

Research

Dance Interaction was developed in cooperation with Professor Seymour Papert from MIT’s Future of Learning Group. Professor Papert did extensive research into developing learning technologies for children. We think that the future belongs to people that are children today. They must be provided with learning tools adequate to their highly skilled technology literacy. Children today learn in a completely different way than we did twenty years ago or our parents forty years ago. The classroom environment is not enough, sitting at a desk reading a book is not as interesting as playing a videogame.

At the same time being able to play a videogame that the child himself designed, through programming it, could be a powerful learning tool for mathematics, physics, music, art.

Process

In cooperation with Trefoil Corporation we developed Dance Interaction. Dance Interaction is an immersive learning environment where children wearing sensors and actuators embedded in their clothes can learn advanced sciences while creating music and dancing. We developed clothes and interface prototypes and presented it to children in US. We got a very positive feedback and look forward to testing the next round of the Dance Interaction project in Italy as well.