A "Black-and-White Box" Approach to User Empowerment With Component Computing

Abstract

The paper discusses three aspects central to the 10 year-old process of design, development and use of E-slate, a construction kit for educational software. These are: (1) the design of computational media for user empowerment, (2) the socially-grounded approach to the building of user communities and (3) the issue of long-term sustainability as crucial for the component movement to progress, but also as constituting its real strength in relation to standalone technologies for computational media. An analysis of E-slate's features, the process and products of user community constructions with E-slate and the organizational aspects of maintaining on-going development and research is provided. We conclude that the design, development and user-support of empowering computational media should be viewed as a continuing effort to build social change architectures, rather than single R&D projects. We suggest that this can only be done through the development and preservation of hybrid communities across organizations.