SMARTER Than Before: Empowering Teachers to Program a Modular IoT Educational Device

Manipulation of tangible objects helps children in both learning and development, while digital technology creates a motivating and engaging environment for children. Tangible interactive tools can effectively combine these two aspects. Nonetheless, to exploit their potential as educational devices, it is necessary to empower teachers in customizing their behaviors. This paper presents the evolution of our first prototype: SMARTER 2.0, a tangible interactive device supporting teachers and children in different learning domains. We adapted the tool design and re-engineered the system architecture, aiming to enable teachers to define learning activities and subject fields more expressively and flexibly. A fundamental part of our work is to allow teachers to define games, modality, and application of SMARTER through its integration with an End-User Development environment.