Young children do not think, discuss, write and rewrite narratives like many adults do; they simultaneously play, pretend, make marks and perform. In other words, "direct and mediated expressions feed one another, and co-evolve." Digital technologies can harness the expressive power of children's imaginative play by linking multiple modalities with children's actions and artefacts from the real world, argue Kaleidoscope members Edith Ackermann (UNISI, IT and MIT, USA) and Françoise Decortis (University of Liège, BE). They provide guidelines for how digital media can be used as a catalyst for children’s creativity, in a poster session at the upcoming Interaction Design and Children Conference in Aalborg, Denmark. (read)

Effective application of technology for learning music can not only enrich children's views of the world, but also stimulate other thinking processes, which they themselves are often previously unaware of.

A new case study developed between the Kaleidoscope dissemination team, Centro Tempo Reale (University of Florence), The Interaction Design Area (University of Siena) and The Interaction Design Centre (University of Limerick) outlines a project which demonstrates how the musical ability latent in many children can be brought to life, and it also hints at how being motivated in learning and creating music can lead to abilities in other areas, such as linguistics or mathematics. (read)

Several Kaleidoscope members are participating in the second annual eLearning Africa conference. Their participation underscores one of conference’s central themes: The growing partnership between Africa and Europe.

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“Research on motivation has taken new avenues in order to grasp the dynamics of motivation in multiple contexts and thus get closer to actual practices of today’s learning,” said Kaleidoscope member Sanna Järvelä (University of Oulu, FI). In light of new technological developments and trends in research her recent book (co-edited with Simone Volet of Murdoch University, Australia) Motivation in Learning Contexts seems particularly relevant to Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL). (read)

Kaleidoscope members Christina M. Steiner, Dietrich Albert,(University of Graz, AT) and Jürgen Heller (University of Tübingen, DE), have written a chapter about concept mapping as it applies to eLearning in the recently published book _Advanced Principles of Effective e-Learning_. (read)