Support of social skill development in children age 7-10 through technologyaided games

In the first years of schooling, children define their social behaviours through a comparison of similar experiences to create behavioural patterns. Therefore, it is important to present children with positive examples of social interactions and to increase their awareness of different roles and viewpoints present in their social setting. Technological solutions could offer a valuable means to enable that learning process. Games that combine benefits of modern pervasive technology with the advantages of traditional play present a great opportunity for social skill development. In this paper we present Head Up Games (HUGs): Camelot and HeartBeat, which are examples of such pervasive games and discuss ways in which they support social interactions between children.

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