A collaborative digital library for children

Over the last three years, a digital library interface has been developed where two children can collaborate using multiple mice on a single computer to access multimedia information concerning animals. This technology, SearchKids , supports past work in copresent collaborative zoomable interfaces for young children. This paper describes the differences in children's collaborative behaviour and dialogue when using two different software conditions to search for animals in the digital library. In this study, half the children had to 'confirm' their collaborative activities (e.g. both children had to click on a given area to move to that area). The other half used an 'independent' collaboration technique (e.g. just one mouse click allowed the pair to move to that area). The participants in this study were 98 second and third grade children (ages 7-9 year-old) from a suburban public elementary school in Prince George's County, Maryland. The results of the study show distinct differences between conditions in how children discussed their shared goals, collaborative tasks, and what outcomes they had in successfully finding multimedia information in the digital library.