Social exclusion is a relatively recent term, whosecreation is attributed to René Lenoir
(Lenoir, 1974). Its concept covers a remarkably wide range of social and economic problems,
and can be triggered for various reasons: mentally and physically handicapped, abused
children, delinquents, multi-problem households, asocial people, and other social “misfits”
(Silver, 1995, pp. 63; Foucault, 1992).
With an increasingly multi-cultural population, cultural and social inequalities rapidly
ascend, bringing with them the need for educational restructuring. We are living in an evermore diverse world, and children need to be educated to be receptive to the different types of
people around them, especially considering social and cultural aspects. It is with these goals
that inclusive education has seen an increased trend in today’s academic environment,
reminding us that even though children may be taught under the same roof, discriminatory
practices might still happen.
There are, however, a number of developed tools to assess the various dimensions of
social networks. These are mostly based on questionnaires and interviews, which tend to be
fastidious and don’t allow for longitudinal, large scale measurement.
This thesis introduces BlueFriends, a Bluetooth-based measurement tool for social
inclusion/exclusion on elementary school classes. The main goals behind the development of
this tool were a) understanding how exclusion manifests in students’ behaviors, and b)
motivating pro-social behaviors on children throughthe use of a persuasive technology.