IDC 2008 - Workshops

Special Needs Wednesday, June 11, 2008

Marginalized Young People Wednesday, June 11, 2008

Workshop on Designing for Children with Special Needs
Workshop Chairs: Andrea Tartaro (Northwestern University) & Gillian R. Hayes (University of California, Irvine)

The workshop on "Designing for Children with Special Needs" was a full-day pre-conference workshop. The goals of the session were to:

• Bring together researchers and designers who work with children with special needs
  and their caregivers
• Discuss best practices for understanding and designing for children's needs
• Analyze specific challenges for working with special populations and new methods for approaching these challenges
• Brainstorm about new directions for research and design
• Discover opportunities for collaboration and innovation

For more details, see the Special Needs Workshop Page.

Workshop on Marginalized Young People: Inclusion Through ICT
Workshop Chairs: Franca Garzotto (Politecnico di Milano, Italy) & Heidi Schelhowe (University of Bremen, Germany)

Poverty, not belonging to the mainstream culture and language, lack of competences, and lack of motivation are some of the main factors for exclusion of young people from full participation in Western societies. As several empirical studies show, all young people tend to use digital technologies increasingly, but big differences exist in how they are using digital media. At the individual level and, more and more, at the social level, many young people today live in both worlds: the physical world, and the virtual world that ICT makes accessible anytime, anywhere. As this trend continues, It becomes crucial to explore these new kind of digital divide that is arising among young generations, which does not result from having no or limited access to ICT, but is produced by remaining only a user vs. becoming a critical actor who can exploit virtual experiences in order to increase his or her cultural, social and even economic capital. The workshop aimed at bringing together technologists, empirical researchers, designers, educators, sociologists, and decision-makers in any domain involving young people, to explore together some of the following issues:

• What are main factors of exclusion from positive participation in Digital Media activities?
• How can ICT solutions and learning environments for inclusion look like?
• What success stories/best practices can be told about positive impacts of ICT in these young people's lives?

For more information on the workshop, please see the Marginalized Young People Page.