When I invited the children from this study into the large-scale arranged project room, they were offered multiple ways of interaction and to be co-creative in their exploration of materialities. They were provided rich opportunities to influence their surroundings, to make artistic expressions, and to make their own choices in interaction with different materialities, each other, their ECE teacher, and me. This interaction, and especially movement, played a crucial role in creating opportunities for new perceptions (Noë, 2006). In facilitating sense-making it is important that both ECE and ECTE teachers have an open-minded and explorative approach to materiality so it becomes possible to make new discoveries and artistic expressions.
A creative process of exploring materiality is an open-ended process that requires a willingness to accept not knowing what the outcome will be.
Digital technologies with a software that provide opportunities for co-creation are essential to sense-making. This kind of software can be called open-ended and invites children to create and explore (Bølgan, 2018, p. 99). In my examination of the virtual picturebook app, I evaluated the limitations related to the possibilities for exploration, predetermined the possibilities of interaction, and determined how the device influenced sensory perception in interaction with the app. The interaction was much like following someone else’s path without the opportunity to create new solutions. The specific app provided rich opportunities for cooperation; however, this cooperation extended only to co-option, not to co-creation. That a digital technology provides opportunities for cooperation means that it invites cooperation with the features that the app developers have made. For example, you can shake the device to make snow fall off a tree. To be co-opted in this context means that you are invited into an environment where the rules are already set, and you have few possibilities to affect the outcome of the cooperation. Thompson and Stapleton (2008, p. 25) state that, to make sense, a person needs the opportunity to actively engage with the world to transform it into an environment that has meaning, significance, and value. This means we will have the opportunity to influence our surroundings, explore the world, and make discoveries that help us make sense of our place in the world. I acknowledge co-creation to be central in both adults and children’s sense-making processes. Here, I use the term co-creation to denote having an opportunity to make choices and be involved in creating content in an app. I find this to be an important aspect to take into account when we are applying digital technologies in educational settings. Thus, it is important to make open-ended technology available for children so that they can be co-creators of content, to have the opportunity to choose from a large number of possible choices, and not be confined to the predetermined possibilities in the software. This is the explorative perspective which is highlighted in several studies as being all-important in children’s use of digital technologies (Bølgan, 2018; Letnes, 2014; Waterhouse, 2013).
There are many positive aspects involved in what digital technologies as mediators can do when co-creation is taken into account. As discussed in 6.1.3, a digital technology can shape our experience of the material world and make us experience new aspects of it. A digital technology can make us experience representations from the physical world as virtual objects – an illusion of a physical object with illusory material qualities. Such is a reduction from a full bodily experience, and such an experience depends on a person’s past experience with similar
strategies for exploring virtual materialities in physical environments and virtual environments mediated by a touch device (Table 7). I found that the children’s exploration of virtual materiality largely involved their tactile and haptic perception. Michaels and Palatinus (2017, p. 23) describe how the haptic sense depends on exploratory movements to make information available in physical surroundings. The children’s tactile and haptic perception was crucial in their exploration even when the materiality was virtual. They used their tactile and haptic perception, emotions, and imagination to make sense of virtual materiality. They mentally and bodily accessed their past touch experiences of handling material objects to explore and play with virtual ones.
The children explored virtual materiality by moving their own bodies and material objects in an environment with virtual materiality. They manipulated virtual materiality by moving material objects like a transparent piece of cloth hanging from the roof, and by adding other materials, such as light, to the room. This was a way to explore and experience the combination of physical and virtual materialities and to be involved in co-creation. Their bodies became important in exploring the materialities in the environment. They manipulated virtual materiality by moving their own bodies, by blocking the light from a projector with their hands, and by moving as if dancing in front of the light from the projector creating shadows. This surely exemplified the strategy to explore and experience the combination of materialities and part of a co-creative process. It is also important to acknowledge that virtual materiality made available through a digital technology can be an abstract materiality which is equally possible to manipulate and explore. The children’s exploration and manipulation of abstract virtual materiality can be a way to make artistic expressions and be invited into co-creation. Thus, bodily movement (tactile and haptic) in interaction with virtual materiality, virtual objects, and virtual environments supports the sense-making processes.
A main finding in this research is that digital technologies, such as a camera software app and elementary digital technology like a projector, can create opportunities to be explorative and co-creative. However, the innovative use of software with the virtual reality picturebook app, in the context of exploration and co-creation, only provided opportunities for cooperation that extended to co-option. In order to facilitate sense-making, it is important to take time to stop for reflection, while being sensible of the present and responding to what happens in a specific context. The children’s combination of physical materials and digital technologies can provide them with opportunities to be explorative and co-creative. There is a potential to combine materials and digital technologies in different ways to facilitate sense-making. I identified potentials to experience the combination of different materialities working
with propositions, different textures, projection of virtual materiality onto materials, qualities like transparence, and placement of objects in an environment. In Table 7, I present discoveries from this study and implications that I encourage teachers to take into consideration to support children’s sense-making with digital technologies. I will return to this in section 6.2 when I present the practical implications of this study.
Table 7. Discoveries of what digital technologies as mediators can do, strategies exploring virtual objects and virtual materialities, and suggested strategies.
Discoveries
- When moving within a digital touch device, the world is experienced and mediated through it.
- We can experience new aspects of the material world.
- Our experience of the material world can be shaped and transformed by what we are able to perceive through the spatiotemporal potential of materially.
- We are able to experience representations from the physical world as virtual objects – that is, illusions of materials.
- We can experience mediated virtual environments through projection and through touch devices.
- We can engage with virtual objects and virtual environments in a reduction from full bodily experience dependent on past experience, emotions, and imagination.
- Mediated virtual objects can invite us into imagination and haptic exploration.
- Mediated virtual objects (or characters) can evoke emotions, empathy, and feelings.
Discoveries of strategies exploring virtual objects
- Children use similar strategies in exploring physical and virtual objects.
- Children can experience virtual objects as representations of the physical world.
- Children use past tactile and haptic experience from handling material objects to explore and play with virtual objects.
- Children use past tactile and haptic experience with digital technology (e.g., pushing an iPad button) in exploration and play with virtual objects projected into a physical environment.
- Children use imagination and haptic perception to make sense of and explore virtual objects.
- Children explore virtual materiality projected into the physical environment by moving their own bodies and “touching” virtual materiality in space.
- Children move material objects with a virtual materiality projected onto them in exploration and play (e.g., transparent piece of white cloth with a buck skull projected onto it).
- Children shape the experience of materiality by moving material objects and their own bodies.
- Children move their bodies to manipulate virtual materiality and light from a projection. They play with different materialities and make shadows.
- Children manipulate virtual materiality by adding other materials such as light. They manipulate virtual materialities by moving flashlights in their hands.
- Children explore and manipulate abstract virtual materiality.
- Children explore spatiotemporal potentials of virtual materiality through interaction.
- Bodily movement in a physical environment in interaction with a virtual environment mediated through a physical device is central to making sense of a
Factors to
- Teachers must be aware of how virtual objects can trigger imagination and emotions.
- Teachers must pay attention to and take children’s previous tactile and haptic experience of touching three-dimensional objects and materials into account in exploration and play with virtual materiality.
- Teachers must facilitate children’s exploration of tactile and haptic exploration of materials like snow to enrich their sensory experience with a virtual materiality.
- Teachers must take tactile and haptic aspects into consideration when facilitating sense-making; for example, children need space to move in physical environments in interaction with virtual ones.
- Teachers must take physical condition and possibilities for bodily movement into consideration in facilitating sense-making in interaction with digital technology.
- Teachers can facilitate children’s tactile and haptic material experience while they are in interaction with a virtual environment in an app, for example, having children walk on snow while interacting with a virtual snowy landscape.
- Teachers must insure that children experience rich sensory perception in advance or after interaction with virtual objects or virtual environments.
- Teachers can project a virtual world (like Wuwu’s world) into an environment. In this way, children can be given the ability to walk into it and to experience bodily movement and haptic exploration in a physical environment.
- Teachers must take the spatiotemporal factors of exploring materialities into consideration in facilitating sense-making.
- Elementary digital technology such as a camera app can invite children into co-creation and facilitate sense-making.