In an effort to cultivate literacy skills in the United States the nation's public libraries have embraced digital technologies, mostly in the form of public-access computers loaded with software, supported by library staff. But interacting with a "keyboard-mouse-screen" may not offer the immediacy of interacting with the printed page, and both forms of interaction are far removed from the physical, tangible and social world in which young children thrive. The PI argues that literacy can be cultivated in a space that is at once physical and digital and evocative of the book being read. To this end, in this project the PI will explore the LIT ROOM, a literacy support tool at room-scale that consists of a novel suite of user-friendly, networked, "architectural-robotic" artifacts embedded in the everyday physical space of the library. This physical-digital environment is transformed by words read by its young visitors, so that the everyday space of the library "merges" with the imaginary space of the book; the book becomes the room, the room becomes the book. And should the LIT ROOM's intelligent reconfigurations not match the imagined spaces of young readers, they can "fine-tune" the room through tangible interfaces. The work will proceed in two phases. First, the PI will ask children to decide what makes for a compelling LIT ROOM. He will present to children, ages 4-8, low-fidelity "architectural-robotic" artifacts within a library space to help capture how children define and employ this digital-physical suite to "create the book." Then, he will iteratively develop and evaluate the suite as a fully-working environment that embodies what was learned from the child-centered participatory design process. The test bed implementation will be situated in the Richland County Public Library of Columbia, South Carolina, the largest public library in a state that ranks among the lowest in the State Technology and Science Index and the highest in numbers of people who are both illiterate and living below the poverty line. To tackle this challenge, the interdisciplinary team includes two investigators with complementary expertise in continuum and architectural robotics, and literacy education.
Broader Impacts: Because the prototype implementation will be located in a real-world public space it will have exposure to a large audience. Project outcomes will also advance the start-of-the-art of robotic systems for a real-world environment and application, using a mix of sensing/actuating and deformable continuum surfaces. The findings will further advance knowledge and understanding in literacy by studying and providing experimental data on the efficacy of tangible environmental technologies in promoting literacy in children.
