Make, wear, play
Veena Vasudevan, Yasmin B. Kafai, Lei Yang · 2015
Most approaches to constructionist gaming---students making their own games for learning ---have focused on screen designs. Hybrid crafting approaches that integrate crafts with digital components can extend game making beyond the screen and provide new opportunities for creative expression and learning. In this paper, we report on a workshop with middle school youth (ages 11-13 years) who were using MaKey MaKey, textiles and other conductive materials to sew and glue together wearable game controllers to play their own remixed flappy bird games in Scratch. We examined students' approaches to computing and crafting their onscreen and offscreen designs using Papert's concept of syntonicity that emphasizes resonance across multiple dimensions with children's interests. Finally, we discuss in which ways constructionist gaming can benefit from extending their designs into the physical world.