Thinking Representation Tools for Science Education with Drawings

Drawings is a method of learning with expressing children's idea as pictures. We developed Polka for children to express their image by combining simple figure objects. Polka can easily show their drawing process for them to explain children's science image. We believe Polka is one of good drawing tools for expressing children's science idea and their thinking process. However, it is generally difficult for children to draw pictures including some movement. Therefore, as the next stage, we developed an animation making system called "Galop" for science education with Drawings. Galop aims to deepen children's understandings by expressing objects and phenomenon with some moving as dynamic models. In the drawing environment provided by Galop, children express dynamic phenomenon as animation. Through the process of animation making, they get deep understanding about the dynamic phenomenon by checking objects moving on the drawing environment. This paper describes development of two thinking representation tools: Polka for drawing static images and Galop for expressing dynamic phenomenon based on Drawings.