Have you ever thought of using a jump rope to stimulate creativity? I hadn't. But some cognitive scientists in the United Kingdom have been testing an interactive exhibit for children that is supposed to do just that. What the children use, however, is no ordinary jump rope. It's called the EYE-JUMP, and it's embedded with tiny electronic devices and light emitting diodes. Once put into motion (in what I assume is a dimly lit space), the rope displays visual and audio information -- even enabling a smiley face to hang in the air.
I read about EYE-JUMP in the conference proceedings from Creativity and Cognition 2007, a conference hosted by the Association for Computing Machinery in Washington, DC last month. The paper, written by Su Zheng and colleagues at Coventry University in the U.K., describes how this "hybrid interactive exhibit" -- and its effect of delightful surprise -- got children to think outside the box and to "produce their own design for multiple uses of a common object."
I haven't been able to find any video or web site about this exhibit, but I'll keep hunting. I know my kids and I would jump for a jump rope like this one.
10:31:54 AM 
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