Evaluating Early Prototype Technology and Activities in the Development of Online, Cross-cultural, Children's Book Communities

In this project a group of researchers from the University of Maryland and the University of MarylandBaltimore County are working together with colleagues in Argentina, Hungary, Mexico and theUS to create children’s book communities. This case study describes early work in developingthe online book community, known as ‘‘ICDLCommunities’’ because it is associated with a largedigital library of children’s books known as the ‘‘International Children’s Digital Library’’ (ICDL)(www.childrenslibrary.org or www.icdlbooks.org). The idea is to enable childrenfrom across the world to communicate with each other about the books they read and about theirlives; for example, what it is like to go to school in their country; what people eat; what games theyplay, and so on.In this case study we focus on the evaluation of early prototypes of components of theICDLCommunities software. We describe the field evaluations of school-based groups of children,aged 7 to 9, who were supported by their teachers and researchers from our team. Much of the earlyprototyping work was done using paper and video which was then sent to the children in anothercountry. A strong focus for both kinds of activities was to help the children to get to know each otherbetter. As the children became more comfortable working together they were set the task of readinga story form a book in the digital library and then ‘‘writing’’ a new ending for the story. These new