A Hands-on Approach to Making in the Internet of Things and Creative Technology Geert de Haan Wittenborg University of Applied Sciences Apeldoorn, the Netherlands geert.de.haan@upcmail.nl ABSTRACT Ambient & Pervasive Design is a second-year course following a practice-oriented vision on Human-Centred Creative Technology to educating Internet of Things (IoT) development techniques, teaching students to work with sensors and effectors on the Arduino platform with a minimum of theory and a maximum of hands-on expercience. The paper describes the setup and design of the course as a practical hands-on course to introduce and familiarise students with all the basic techniques for IoT applications and prototypes. Author Keywords Education; ubiquitous computing; ambient intelligence; pervasive computing; sensory applications; embedded design; curriculum development. ACM Classification Keywords K.3.2: Computer and Information Science Education. H.5.2. User Centred Design. INTRODUCTION We are currently witnessing a major shift or perhaps even a revolution in computer science towards Ubiquitous Computing and the Internet of Things with computer applications moving into the real world and our personal lives. Education institutes need to anticipate these changes and enable students to design and to build interactive and context-sensitive applications which use sensory data and wireless networks to connect to remote computing platforms and services. This is certainly the case in a BA curriculum for professional education in Media Technology which follows a so-called Human-Centred Creative Technology approach. In Human Centred Creative Technology, students are not merely taught how to apply technology to solve problems but rather, students learn how to apply technology in create ways to solve human problems. As a result, the curriculum was characterized by the common technical topics such as requirements engineering, agile design and UML but it was also extended with creative techniques such as creative research tools, exploratory design and co-design, and it was extended with a focus on user-aspects by means of user- centred design, usability evaluation and accessibility engineering. To facilitate the idea of human-centred creative technology, practical design facilities were developed such as a sensor lab and a fabrication lab or FabLab. In this paper, our main purpose is to illustrate and examplify how to get students acquanted with IoT techniques, using a hands-on approach to motivate students and to help them explore this new field of technology. Ambient & Pervasive Design In teaching IoT or Creative Technology, we might teach students all about IoT technology and subsequently teach them how to apply their knowledge in human-centred and creative ways. In designing a new course to teach students about IoT development techniques, we choose the opposite approach and to provide as little as possible theoretical knowledge and as much as possible hands-on experience to enable students to creatively explore and apply the techniques to build IoT and ubiquitous computing applications. Ambient & Pervasive Design was developed as a second-year course with the purpose to let students get acquainted with the concept of the IoT in HCI and Creative Technology. The main focus is to get students acquainted with applications that make use of context-sensitive information, such as location-based services, personalized advice, adaptive software, restful services, and particularly: sensory interfaces and interactive installations. Why Making in IoT and Creative Technology For years, the Media Technology curriculum has focused on interactive websites, and later on, on mobile phone apps. In Ambient & Pervasive Design, the aim has been to extend the focus to Internet of Things applications. To get students acquanted with IoT technology, the knowledge and techniques are presented in a highly accessible way such as to motivate students and to illustrate how to acquire knowledge by exploring new technologies. Apart from learning to design, implement and experiment with IoT applications as a new application area for HCI and user interface design, there are also several other, more abstract considerations and motivations. One motivation for the course was to advocate the idea of Creative Technology. Particularly in the field of media design with its relatively lightweight and flexible applications, there are ample opportunities for the incremental and exploratory design ideas of Human-Centred Creative Technology [3]. Another motivation for the course was to get students become familiar with FabLabs and Living Labs as places for design exploration and product prototyping [5][6]. For this reason, the course was meant to take place in a FabLab. Furthermore, both Creative Technology and the hands-on