CONFERENCE ANNOUNCEMENT AND CALL FOR PAPERS

The 7th International Conference on Interaction Design for Children (IDC 2008): "Thinking Outside the Toybox"

Northwestern University
Evanston, Illinois
June 11-13, 2008
http://www.idc08.org

We welcome:

• Pre-conference workshop proposals (due January 7th)
• Full papers (due January 21st)
• Posters (due March 3)
• Demos (due March 3)
• Workshop position papers (due March 3)
• Special pre-conference session papers on Designing for Children with
• Special Needs (due March 3)

CONFERENCE OVERVIEW
The IDC 2008 conference will continue to present significant contributions to research, development, and practice in the field of interaction design for children. The goals of the 2008 conference are to better understand children's needs, and how to design for them, with a specific focus on creativity and innovation. We invite researchers to step outside the domains of learning and play, and to consider designing for civic involvement, for democracy, and for physical and emotional well-being, among other topics. We also invite researchers to stop thinking of "children" as a homogeneous group, and to reflect on interaction design for diverse groups of children (children from developing nations, very young children, issues of gender, race and ethnicity, children with special needs).

Anra Kennedy (24hr museum) chairs Marshall Mateer, Bruce Phillips and Helen Wright. What schools need. Marshall Mateer http://shapesoftime.net case study: children mapping docks where Titanic was built (entering content with geopositioning). challenge= orientation. where am i in relation to the information that i am taking in? how does it relate to me, and how do i evaluate its dimension/scale? case study: Journey in Stone: Caedmon School Project from the Cleveland Iron Mines. industrial heritage of area no longer in the community; mines are gone as is their central presence in the community. children are creating content, comfortable with technology.