Creating Web Portals with Children as Designers: Bonded Design and the Zone of Proximal Development
Andrew Large, Leanne Bowler, Jamshid Beheshti, Valerie Nesset · 2007
ABSTRACT. The article presents a new technology design methodology that the authors have termed “Bonded Design ” and that was applied by two in-tergenerational teams comprising adults and grade-three elementary school students in one case, and adults and grade-six students in a second case. The objective of each team was to design a low-tech web portal prototype that elementary school students could use to find information on Canadian his-tory to support class-based projects. The relationship between Bonded Design and Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) theory is explored, and the success of Bonded Design is explained in part by its use of the ZPD as a conceptual framework for the development of a community of designers.