SINQ: Designing social media to foster everyday scientific inquiry for children

In this paper, we describe a mobile, social media app called SINQ that was the product of a 15-month co-design process with a child design team. The goal of SINQ is to utilize social media design features in ways that help children conceptualize Scientific INQuiry practices through intuitive sharing of media and ideas from their everyday lives. We describe how SINQ builds from prior work in software for science learning and mobile technology for children. We also highlight how SINQ is a distinct evolution of technology for scientific inquiry learning. We argue that by taking seriously, the affordances of social media applications, new opportunities and design challenges arise for interaction design for learning technologies.