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Illiteracy is a global problem that impacts societal and economic growth and development, and is directly correlated with the financial success, health and overall well-being of individuals. Studies indicate that picture-book reading within a facilitated story-time setting is an important tool for language acquisition in children. We hypothesize that in an increasingly digital society, literacy can be cultivated in a robot-embedded environment that is, at once, physical, digital and evocative of the picture-book being read. Inspired by concepts of embodied interaction, our developing LIT ROOM is an intelligent, fine-tunable suite of architectural-robotic artifacts distributed at room-scale in a public library setting. Presented here are motivations for and design overview of this developing interactive artifact. Through a reconfigurable, co-adaptive learning environment, the LIT ROOM aims to augment the dialogical reading of picture-books within an engaging and exploratory space for the advancement of literacy and learning.

The outcome of a multidisciplinary and iterative process, the LIT KIT is a portable, cyber-physical artifact supporting children's picture-book reading. The LIT KIT follows from the hypothesis that children's literacy can be advanced in a tangible, co-creative environment that is both physical and digital. The LIT KIT employs color, sound and movement to scaffold meaning-making through the creation of an environment that is evocative of the picture-book being read. Designed with a Sifteo TM cube [16] interface, the LIT KIT creates room-scaled audio-visual and spatial effects to both contextualize language and provide feedback during dialogical interactions between a child and an adult reader. Children can customize the LIT KIT settings to actively interpret the ideas, concepts and environments inherent in the picture-book's words and images. The LIT KIT is an outreach component, for home or classroom use, of our developing roomscaled LIT ROOM for a major public library. Presented here are motivations for the LIT KIT, and an elaboration of its design and development. Usability evaluations have begun and continue, as we further the prototype with expected completion in Summer 2013.

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