Merging physical and digital white canvas to unleash children's creativity

Abstract

This paper describes the activities and results of a workshop designed for children to understand the use of a novel interface, a hybrid physical-digital book, and at the same time to assess the kind of content that children would create. In this interface a physical book is synchronized together with a tablet computer so that flipping the page changes the content on the screen. We challenged children to create and draw a story for both the physical page and the screen. The task involved imagining a story, thinking and reflecting about it, discussing it with a peer, take decisions, develop a storyboard, and finally bring it to life on the physical book as well as on the tablet device. After the presentation of the task by the workshop organizers, children were given all the material they needed to concretize the proposed task and developed the content all by themselves. In the whole thirteen children participated in the workshop authoring five hybrid digital-physical books. In the scope of the activity children took over multiple roles, becoming authors, directors, scripters, performers and narrators, thus creating multiple layers of interaction, confirming that involving in the creation of graphicnarratives is a powerful task.