Connecting out-of-school learning to home: Digital postcards from summer camp

Parents and children are rapidly adopting mobile technologies, yet designs for mobile devices that serve a communication function to connect parents to children's out-of-school time activities are limited. As a result, our team designed the Digital Postcard Maker so that children attending summer camps can create digital photographs to send home to their parents. These digital postcards help to connect children's home life with out-of-school learning experiences and also support 21st Century Skills' media literacy practices. The research design included two iterations of a design-based research project with 58 children from 55 families. Design implications related to supporting informal science learning with mobile computing relying on digital photography are shared, including (i) the need for additional support to transform an out-of-school recreational activity into an out-of-school learning activity, and (ii) the utility of photographs as a means to connect parents and children to talk about environmental sciences topics.