Teletherapy for speech-language therapy (SLT) has become essential for many families. Early intervention for young children is important to ensure that developmental milestones are met. In this study, from a corpus of 10 videos, we present three cases of online and in-person therapy sessions with children between the ages of 3 and 6. Our analysis shows how online and in-person SLT sessions use tools, how they are conscripted into social and transactional moments, and identifies features of tools that support or hinder therapists’ goals (see Figure 1). From our findings, we discuss in detail four overarching features of tools and implications for design. These features support engagement, space usage, child-centred play, and adaptability in therapy sessions. The paper outlines how these features are present in the tools used in SLT, and describes how they impact SLT activities, therapists’ and children's goals, and the environment for social transactional activities.

This paper analyses a novel tangible technology in early childhood environments as a boundary object. Objects in early childhood environments often share space between adults’ and children's objectives. By considering these objects as boundary objects, designers are led to explore how children appropriate objects for playful learning activities beyond adult objectives. This paper discusses Wobblies (see Figure 1), a novel technology probe, to interrogate how a socially-motivated design with conditional and positional interactive behaviour was understandable to children, and how they appropriated the probe in playful activities. We deployed the probe in a rural Australian preschool in a free-play environment. Initial observational findings show that the children understood the procedure of the interactions and moved from exploring to constructive play activities.

Introducing digital literacy to young children develops foundational skills in problem-solving and supports their cognitive development, including critical thinking. However, physical manipulatives for digital literacy are not always designed for early-year environments or specifically for young children. Physical manipulatives can offer developmentally appropriate tools to introduce foundational digital literacy through dynamic system knowledge before children become developmentally ready for more formalised coding activities. This paper presents an initial study in a preschool environment with children (ages 3 – 5 years) using novel physical manipulatives, Embeddables (Fig. 1), in child-led free and guided play activities in a preschool. From our initial analysis of the types of activities the children engaged in, we identify how, firstly, children used the proximal relations to undertake experimental understanding of the devices, which secondly led to using the proximal relationships in their social play, further supported by the scale and feedback of the toys.

The global education landscape continues to be disrupted by COVID-19. The unique circumstances created by this crisis has led to unexpected opportunities to leverage innovative uses of technologies that can radically innovate education service delivery. We map out the context of Pakistan – a country where challenges pertaining to both access to education and quality learning predate the pandemic. A context largely under explored in design and HCI research. This paper presents insights from conversations with 21 stakeholders across 15 design activities, that were structured around speculative design proposals to collaboratively envision the future of education in Pakistan. The paper offers directions for the design of EdTech through a plural, and culturally rooted speculative discussion, highlighting (1) opportunities and considerations for localising design for education, and (2) reframing the value of education in Pakistan.

Tangible embedded technology kits are increasingly being used in schools, often as a means of providing students a platform for problem solving and computational thinking. When they are incorporated in creative tasks such as open-ended design projects, embedded technologies take on the role of a design material - a medium for exploration, iteration and creation. This paper presents some early results of a video analysis of school children's collaborative interactions with tangible, embedded technologies in an open-ended design task. We identify some of the difficulties students encounter and some of the practices they develop with these kits as they work to progress their designs. Our findings detail how children deal with the opacity of the system and how they use it as a springboard for imagination. Our study provides an opportunity to reflect on how technology kits currently resist becoming a design material.