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BitBlox: A Redesign of the Breadboard

Authors:

Kayla DesPortes,

Betsy DiSalvoAuthors Info & Claims

IDC '16: Proceedings of the The 15th International Conference on Interaction Design and Children

Pages 255 - 261

https://doi.org/10.1145/2930674.2930708

Published: 21 June 2016 Publication History

Abstract

Building physical computing projects can enable learners to integrate computing into a range of interests and disciplines. However, the electronic portion of these projects can be difficult. Students are learning new concepts as well as how to work with new tools. This influx of information can be difficult for students to retain in their working memory as they construct their circuits. In this paper, we introduce BitBlox, a set of modular, solderless Breadboards for prototyping circuits. BitBlox attempts to decrease the cognitive load on the user by reducing the complexity found in the standard Breadboard by bringing visibility to the underlying connections within its modules. We present a comparative classroom study integrating the Breadboard and BitBlox into two different high school classes. Our qualitative analysis focuses on student errors, strategies, and collaborative practices, highlighting important dynamics for designing hardware tools.

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Cited By

Turakhia DLudgin DMueller SDesportes K(2023)What Can We Learn From Educators About Teaching in Makerspaces?Extended Abstracts of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3544549.3585687(1-7)Online publication date: 19-Apr-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3544549.3585687
Ko DKim YZhu JWessely MMueller S(2023)Demonstration of FlexBoard: A Flexible Breadboard Platform for Interaction Prototyping on Curved and Deformable ObjectsExtended Abstracts of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3544549.3583915(1-4)Online publication date: 19-Apr-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3544549.3583915
Ko DKim YZhu JWessely MMueller S(2023)FlexBoard: A Flexible Breadboard for Interaction Prototyping on Curved and Deformable SurfacesProceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3544548.3580748(1-13)Online publication date: 19-Apr-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3544548.3580748
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

BitBlox: A Redesign of the Breadboard
1. Applied computing
  1. Education
2. Social and professional topics
  1. Professional topics
    1. Computing education

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Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

IDC '16: Proceedings of the The 15th International Conference on Interaction Design and Children

June 2016

774 pages

ISBN:9781450343138

DOI:10.1145/2930674

Conference Chairs:
Janet C. Read
University of Central Lancashire, UK
,
Phil Stenton
BBC Research & Development, UK

Copyright © 2016 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

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SIGCHI: ACM Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 21 June 2016

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Research-article
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Refereed limited

Funding Sources

National Science Foundation

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IDC '16

Sponsor:

SIGCHI

IDC '16: Interaction Design and Children

June 21 - 24, 2016

Manchester, United Kingdom

Acceptance Rates

IDC '16 Paper Acceptance Rate 36 of 77 submissions, 47%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 172 of 578 submissions, 30%

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Citations

Cited By

Turakhia DLudgin DMueller SDesportes K(2023)What Can We Learn From Educators About Teaching in Makerspaces?Extended Abstracts of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3544549.3585687(1-7)Online publication date: 19-Apr-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3544549.3585687
Ko DKim YZhu JWessely MMueller S(2023)Demonstration of FlexBoard: A Flexible Breadboard Platform for Interaction Prototyping on Curved and Deformable ObjectsExtended Abstracts of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3544549.3583915(1-4)Online publication date: 19-Apr-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3544549.3583915
Ko DKim YZhu JWessely MMueller S(2023)FlexBoard: A Flexible Breadboard for Interaction Prototyping on Curved and Deformable SurfacesProceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3544548.3580748(1-13)Online publication date: 19-Apr-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3544548.3580748
Turakhia DLudgin DMueller SDesportes K(2023)Understanding the educators’ practices in makerspaces for the design of education toolsEducational technology research and development10.1007/s11423-023-10305-172:1(329-358)Online publication date: 27-Nov-2023
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11423-023-10305-1
Alessandrini A(2022)How an Undergraduate Group of Design Students Solved Wiring Errors during the Prototyping of an Interactive ArtifactProceedings of the 33rd European Conference on Cognitive Ergonomics10.1145/3552327.3552345(1-5)Online publication date: 4-Oct-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3552327.3552345
Kim YZhu JTrivedi MTurakhia DWu NKo DWessely MMueller S(2022)SensorViz: Visualizing Sensor Data Across Different Stages of Prototyping Interactive ObjectsProceedings of the 2022 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference10.1145/3532106.3533481(987-1001)Online publication date: 13-Jun-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3532106.3533481
Alessandrini A(2022)A Study of Students Engaged in Electronic Circuit Wiring in an Undergraduate CourseJournal of Science Education and Technology10.1007/s10956-022-09994-932:1(78-95)Online publication date: 4-Oct-2022
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10956-022-09994-9
Sun LPan DFan YYang YLi JChen YTao YWang G(2021)JellyBoard: A Flexible Breadboard for Electronic PrototypingProceedings of the Ninth International Symposium of Chinese CHI10.1145/3490355.3490369(117-119)Online publication date: 16-Oct-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3490355.3490369
Gomes de Siqueira ABhargava AVenkatakrishnan RVenkatakrishnan RKaltenbrunner MMurer MWolf KOakley I(2021)PPCards: Toward Enhancing Electronic Prototyping with Editions of a Card-based PlatformProceedings of the Fifteenth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction10.1145/3430524.3440643(1-11)Online publication date: 14-Feb-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3430524.3440643
Chang RWang WChiang CWu TXu ZLuo JChen BYang XKitamura YQuigley AIsbister KIgarashi TBjørn PDrucker S(2021)AccessibleCircuits: Adaptive Add-On Circuit Components for People with Blindness or Low VisionProceedings of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3411764.3445690(1-14)Online publication date: 6-May-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3411764.3445690
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