Handbook of Design in Educational Technology

25 Designing for Learning with Tangible Technologies

Sara Price and Paul Marshall

1. Introduction

With the emergence of increasingly small, cheap and robust computing platforms and digital sensing technologies, the potential for embedding computing power into physical artefacts and linked to digital representations in flexible ways is increasing. A number of opportunities for tangible technologies to support learning in new ways have been made. Their very nature seems to foster hands-on learning, providing new explorative ways of interacting with information and engendering a more active approach to learning than traditional computing; digital augmentation offers opportunities to present information not normally available in the physical world ...