Field visit in a kindergarten in Copenhagen.

To understand deeper the everyday life in kindergartens, we went out to visit Anna Havana, a kindergarten located in Islands Brygge, Copenhagen. We did an open interview with Janni, who has been working there for 19 years.

The interview was conducted inside, in her usual work environment with the children around, and therefore they were also observed. Janni told us that they use quite a lot of time to plan and document their pedagogic work, and showed the different papers and folders used in the documentation. She problematized the spreading of diseases in the kindergarten, but stated that children needs some bacterial exposure to develop a strong immune system, and that they themselves are responsible for washing their hands well, several times a day. Before lunch they all ran to the washroom, and washed hands without requests. This observation, along with the pedagogic expectations, went well in line with what we had been reading about the values of Nordic pedagogy. The overall focus of the Nordic pedagogy is on developing independent and responsible children, with abilities to concentrate and learn on their own initiative.

One of the biggest fears and dangers, faced in the everyday life in the kindergarten is, according to Janni, the safety of the children. Anna Havana kindergarten is located in an apartment, and does not have an outside area attached: when the children go outside it is excursions in public zones. On excursions two pedagogues has responsibility of twenty-two children. Janni says the children are behaving really well and have good understanding of their limits and own responsibility, but eitherway she fears to suddenly loose a child. She counts the children extensively and is very strict with towards them, when they are outside. Towards the question of, if any device would be helpful, she stated that it would just be an extra load, if she had to keep an eye on one more thing.

Kindergarten as the focus area.

From the initial process of listing areas and criteria for choice, we chose the kindergarten as the focus point for our project. The use of public kindergartens as part of the welfare system in Denmark, and the overall pedagogic angle as part of a Northern European tradition of child development, makes the kindergarten represent values of Danish society. Although we will develop a product in collaboration with Danish kindergartens, we imagine it to be transferable to other nations and cultures, as well as other possible contexts. The kindergarten is an area with different stakeholders involved - parents, children, pedagogues, municipality, etc. - and possible conflicting or dissimilar interests between those stakeholders. The different interests inside the field, characterised by having soft values and a humanistic approach as opposed to more hardcore facts such as physical measurements, opens the kindergarten for new solutions based on in depth research of the field.

Choosing an area to make sense of sensors within.

We began the project by outlining possible areas of interest that could be the outset for further research, areas within which we could make sense of sensors. Along with the listing of areas, we developed different criteria for choosing between them. The subject should represent values of the Danish society, be possible to research first hand, have a relatively big target group across nations and cultures, and speak to our respective personal interests in the group. Furthermore, we were leaning towards choosing an area of humanistic challenges, than more practical challenges, because of the design task made by working with technical sensors, inside qualitative complexities.