Extending the reggio emilia educational approach to creativity support environments

Intelligent Systems can effectively bridge the wondrous world of childhood and the adult world of rules, goals and expectations. This paper explores the possibility of an embodied child-computer interaction that cultivates creativity - a core value of the successful adult in an increasingly digital society. We draw specifically on the Reggio Emilia method of education, not by adding to it PCs (as has been done, with mixed results), but instead, by respecting its focus on haptics - on the handling of physical things as a way of learning - embedding computation in the very fabric of the physical environment. We call this embodied system a Creativity Support Environment to emphasize the role of the physical environment as, itself, a "teacher" of creativity.