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192 Socially Intelligent Agentsempathy to be essential to their teaching. They described how it created trust,nurtured feelings of security, built confidence and enabled two-way communication.The teacher had to learn about the child as much as the child had tolearn about the subject. Empathy was central to high quality, effective teachingand learning, enabling greater understanding, better assessment, better academicand emotional support and consequently more appropriate teaching provisionand more appropriate differentiation. Empathy equalises relationships,valuing children’s contributions and understanding and allowing them morecontrol over their learning. Empathy enables the right support, to be given atthe right time, ensuring better scaffolding.4. MethodologyEmpathy built into the methodology of project design involves valuing existingknowledge and understanding and recognising best practice. Sensitivesystem design reflects this by involving all participants from the outset [7].Rapid prototyping in real situations with continual feedback from pupils andteachers, coupled with theoretical reflection on the outcomes from a more detachedperspective, is more likely to ensure appropriate and responsive learningsystems. The complexity of evaluating the use of technology in education iswell documented and there are both established and evolving schemes to supportand illuminate the process [9, 15]. We chose to adapt a methodology,first developed by Carroll and Rosson [4]. This methodology is one of severalparticipatory design approaches, and is organised around the identificationand exploration of key scenarios. Additionally, it uses a form of design rationaleknown as claims analysis. We extended the claims concept to incorporatethe pedagogical intentions underlying the design, and called this pedagogicalclaims analysis. With this method of evaluation each aspect of the designprocess is linked to some possible pedagogic outcome, which raises possibleissues and suggests how each particular claim might be checked. During theinitial collection of pedagogical claims, children and teachers were engagedin low-technology design, [18]. The evaluation has both formative and summativeaspects. The initial claims are revised and validated throughout theformative prototyping phase. The claims help the understanding of the designprocess and making design decisions explicit. Generating many claims in acomplex project helps determine priorities. The way the classroom functionedwas observed before the technology was introduced and teachers met to discussand share their ways of working and teaching methodology for literacy. Theydeveloped typical scenarios of existing ways of working and then envisagedways in which the new technology might support/enhance the functioning oftheir existing classrooms. Hence teachers helped to design both the classroomlayout and contributed their ideas and understanding to the software develop-