Final E-Learning Game…

Here is our final game, this is what we’ve handed in!

Testing part two…

Having been into school on Tuesday and watched how the children used the game and asking them what they thought they’d like to see on the game, we’ve been away and updated the game

What changes have we made?

Sound -

We’ve added the sound component, which we said we would from the start. The voice we used isn’t brilliant it’s a bit robotic but we felt it was ok and clear enough for the children to understand. Which proved to be a good move as they all seemed to hear what she was saying and responded by doing what they’d just heard.

Rollovers -

As some of the children didn’t grasp the concept of some of the symbols used on the screen, such as the next arrow. We’ve added rollover texts which show the word. For example when rolling over the play triangle the word ‘play’ will appear.

Watch -

We slowed down the drawing of the shapes movie clip, as it started a bit too soon and the children were so busy looking around the screen they missed it. So now the instruction is read out, the movie starts drawing, and they can have a go.

Animation -

We’ve made it a bit more interesting, so the children have something fun to look at once they’ve finished. It shows them how they can use the shapes they’ve just been practicing to draw something fun.

After playing the game, one of the children came back out to us and handed us a piece of paper, with a massive grin on their face. This is what was on the piece of paper:

We’re were pretty impressed t say the least, one of the children had understood the point of the game, and was able to draw the shapes by themselves on paper having played our game. We obviously aren’t taking credit for that. The children at this stage in the year have already had a lot of time to learn their shapes. But it shows this child managed to understand the instructions at the very least and felt they could draw the same four shapes for us.

Prototyping with the children…

This afternoon, we went into School to test our prototype with some of the children in the reception class. Mrs Cload gave us four children, who she thought encompassed the range of computer abilities in the class to help us see how they reacted to the game.

We had one child deemed less able, one more able and two average children. Also to make sure we had a fair view of abilities Vanessa made sure we had two girls and two boys.

We had the children come out individually, Simon explained how to play the game, Suzanne made notes on how the children reacted
to the game and used it. As well as how they got on with the laptop touch pad or the graphics tablet.

To keep the children’s identity’s safe (it’s not really important who they are) we’ll refer to them by letters.

A

Wasn’t keen on using the pen to begin with. Read the instructions relatively easily. Got on better with the touch pad, but ultimately when given the choice A seemed to prefer using the pen once they’d had chance to practice a bit.

G

Instructions were beyond reading ability; they instead had to be verbally explained to G. Blue arrow on the intro screen made no sense to G, could grasp the idea. Not confident in using the mouse at all, G found it very difficult to coordinate his movement and the mouse’s. Not keen on using the pen either. Struggled almost the whole way through the game.At the end of playing he game we asked; how do you think we could improve the game? G answered; sounds (didn’t specify what type).

J

May need to add a start button to the intro screen. J went straight for the try in screen rather than work their way along the screens, perhaps because they didn’t understand the instructions? Maybe numbering the screens would be useful, the children can all count 1,2,3 easily. Not sure about the play and pause buttons, didn’t really want to click and find out what they did, even with a bit of coaxing. After the first screen, J seemed to recognise what the next arrow did.

M

Instructions may be a problem? Blue arrow on intro screen not intuitive as a next button. A clear function might be an idea; M didn’t like to go ‘wrong’ Got used to using the graphics tablet and pen really quickly. Maybe instead of the symbols use words, or add additional info to the buttons? Preferred using the pen in the end more so tan the touch pad.At the end of playing the game we asked; did you read the instructions on any of the screens? M’s answer; no.

We also made some additional observations and had a few more thoughts about what we could do to make the game better including:

Slow the watch video down, the children seemed to miss the video, and then didn’t really cotton on to the play and pause button which would allow them to re watch as many times as necessary

Prototyping Stage…

Having spent the last few days getting to a stage where we can prototype our game, we’ve arranged to go into Boringdon tomorrow and get the children to test the game, in it’s current state.

At the moment the game consists of 6 screens:

screen 1 – contains instructions
screen 2 – circle
screen 3 – rectangle
screen 4 – square
screen 5 – triangle
screen 6 – animation at the end of the game

Eventually the shape pages will be random (we’ve already sorted that) but for the purpose of prototyping we wanted to see how the children work through the screens and how they react to the game.

At present we don’t have any audio cues, for two reasons, firstly we havent had a chance to record any, and secondly we want to see how important they are to the children. We hope that the game is easily understood and navigated, without the need for additional instruction. We do intend to add audio cues, this will just act as a test for us to see the importance of them.

We have a quick animation at the moment at the end of the game, but this will be adapted and made more interesting.

Here’s the game we’re taking in to school for prototyping:

Click To Play

Thoughts…

Whilst making the prototype today we came up with a few issues and areas to look into:

Audio – good and bad sounds? Audio instructions too?

Animation – shapes combine at the end of the drawing processes????
eg – spaceship, tractor

Need to add welcome screen and end screen

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On the subject of right and wrong:

Is it really necessary to have the right and the wrong sounds? As this game is designed to back up their learning the children should in theory already know if the shapes they are drawing are the ones they’ve been asked to draw.

Decided to leave the game play as it is for now, going to test it next week and see how the children react to it, and ask the teachers for feedback. See if they think sounds are required for right and wrong.

We now need to take the prototype we’ve made into school and get it tested by the children. As well as answer to the question about the sounds.

Next Step…

After sorting out the layouts yesterday, we made a start on the movie clips of each of the 2d shapes, required by curriculum, being drawn. Simon spent ages, frame by frame drawing and changing the drawing sequence. But the results are brilliant, the children can follow the pencil drawing the shapes.

If you look at the:

“watch” screen you can see the finished video – ie the pencil has drawn the circle already.

“trace” screen you can see where the outlines will be – this isn’t definite at the moment. We still need to work out how thick to make the outline etc.

“try” screen you can see nothing! We haven’t started sorting the white board effect yet. That’s the next step.

Building the game…

We started building our e-learning game today. We’re only at the basic stages, but we’re cracking on which
is the main thing.

Here are some screen shots of our progress so far:

	The question area
	The 3 screens where everything will happen (l-r) the video screen, the trace screen, the try screen.
	Adding the video control buttons, the audio question button and the go back buttons.
	Introducing text to the 3 screens, this is the font the children are familiar with.

Next stage is sorting out the shape drawing videos, that can be tomorrows fun!

Results from our E-Learning presentation

Yesterday we received our E-Learning results for the past to hand ins. We ( me and Suzie ) got 85 for the Project Proposal and 90 for the Presentation on Friday. Thats 20 marks above a first!!

Presentation…

We presented our idea and stage we’re at to the rest of the group today. We felt it went really well, we both answered questions and made different parts of our idea clear and explained things in more detail. Hopefully it was interesting to listen to, fingers crossed we did alright!

E-learning Presentation

We also showed the screen layout we’d done (see previous post), so people could gain a better understanding of what we’re trying to do.

Listening to the others ideas was interesting, we all had such different ideas of things we could teach people, some more complex than others!

E-Learning update

Me and Suzie spent the day getting our Presentation ready for Friday, all the notes are done and Powerpoint is finished, just needs a little touching up. The content of the presentation will be added after Friday!

The project is coming along very well and we have recieved very positive feedback from teacher and lecturers, we have got some layouts on the mend, once they have been completed we can start drawing up all the content then polishing it together.

Presentation Preparation…

Today was spent sorting out our presentation for Friday, we spent a lot of time sorting out ho we wanted the GUI to look. We constantly referred to what we’d been told by the teachers and teaching assistants, in reference to simplicity, language, colours, recognizable symbols etc.

Here’s the layout we decided on, who knew cutting and sticking could be so much fun!!

To explain it:

Colours	We’re sticking to bright, fun, lively colours to hopefully attract and keep the attention of the children.
Font	This is the Nelson font which the children at Boringdon are familiar with seeing everyday. we decided to use this rather than arial for instance is because we hope the children will find it easy to read and instantly recognizable. We’ve been told continuity is very important for young children, so we hope this will help.
Layout	We were concerned at the size of the drawing panels, we weren’t sure they were big enough, or not big enough. So we spoke to Mrs John who seemed confident that the size we have them at will be fine. So we’ve taken her advice and stuck with them as they are.
Language	We still need to sort out how we’re going to ask the questions, this is an example of a question though.
Icons	We were concerned last week that the children may not recognise such symbols as the play triangle, or the red cross for closing an application. However when we observed the IT lesson it became clear the children were already very familiar with such simple symbols, and us using them wouldn’t be ill advised.

An Education…

We just got back from an hour of IT with the two reception classes, lets say it’s very concentrated and a little hectic! We originally were just observing, but the computers decided to play up a bit so we ended up getting the kids all logged on and the rest of it.

The kids were using the snakes and ladders game available on the BBC education site, it was their first time using it so a little bit of help was needed getting going, but it soon became apparent not many of them actually understood how to play the game, and many had never played it as a board game, let alone online.

We picked up on a few things we picked up on with the snakes and ladders:

1 – Lack of instructions. There were next to none. It was assumed the kids knew how to play, the one we were with proved this theory wrong!

2 – The kids whose teacher took longer to run through how to play, like a demo, managed to play the game with more ease, although still struggled. It gave the kids a clearer idea of what to expect and how to play.

3 – There was no way of telling what it was they were doing wrong, they all panicked when the counter didn’t more to the space they thought it should, there were no instructions or hints as to what they should or need to do.

The second class had a go on another game called, find one more. Which is basically pairs. They all knew exactly what to do with this game. We asked why they were so good with it, and apparently they play this most days while waiting for dinner or home time. So its more a case of repetition than anything else. None of them seemed to respond as far as we could see to the flashing trim around the cards to indicate right or wrong, they just wanted to push on with the game.

When we observed the children it became apparent that some of the kids hadn’t used a mouse as much as some of the other children. Some were handling the task just fine, but others had very poor hand to eye co-ordination, they couldn’t relate that there wasn’t any space on the table for the mouse to move, when the mouse wasn’t at the end of the screen. Even when demonstrated that you could lift the mouse some were still confused.

Vanessa Cload one of he teachers got a little boy to show Simon “Tizzys toy box” and a little girl to show Suzanne “Izzys Island”. This gave us the chance to ask the kids themselves questions about what they were doing and describing how they knew what to do etc.

Simon – I then was given the opportunity to sit with a pupil, then he was demonstrating to me a shape game on the Tizzy’s Toybox software. The game was called jigsaw, the user had to click where the correct piece should go. The jigsaw obviously had an image to make it more user friendly from him but I asked if he was paying any attention to the pictures and he said “No, I’m looking at the sides. (of the shapes)” He clearly had spent time on the pc before, his hand to eye co-ordination was excellent and knew how to control the mouse.

Suzanne – I watched a little girl play with Izzys Island, she showed me a couple of the games she likes to play. One game was about patterns and deciding which came next. I was asking her different questions about what she was doing and why. The most interesting answer she gave when i asked her about the instructions at the bottom of the screen, did she know what they said, her answer was no. So she wasn’t paying any attention to the written instructions, but still knew what to do, i think this shows more her ingenuity than anything else.

Cutting and Sticking…

Today was possibly one of the best practical sessions ever! Was all about getting us to think about layouts and things to include in our games. Katina had a whole stationary cupboard with her! Although the cutting and sticking made a pleasant change from all the programming and what have you we’re doing at the moment, it was also really useful in getting us to think about colours which could be used and how we want to lay the screen out.

Here’s what we came up with:

To explain it:

• We’ve gone with very bright colours, we think predominantly primary colours as they are very bright and will hopefully grab the attention of children, who often have very short attention spans.
• The red rectangle would be where the questions are written, in a nice big clear font.
• There’s a colour palette, which we’re debating over whether to include. It would be used as part of the questions, ie ‘draw a blue square’ and the child would need to select the colour blue then draw the shape.
• The screen is divided into , one area for each part of the process, to show them as separate component parts of a whole process, although this wont be apparent to the children. This could just be seen as levels to them, they need to complete one part to move on to the next.
• Rounded corners give the screen a more approachable quality, this is important we feel, in gaining the children’s confidence. If they think the game is fun they’ll get more out of it.
• The video symbols. It was pointed out to us that the children might not know what the symbols mean. We’re going to investigate this, and ask either the children themselves or their teaching staff, possibly both to make sure we’re not adding a component to the game which they wont understand, and therefor use.

We arranged to go into Boringdon on Monday to observe an IT lesson with each reception class, so this will give us a chance to see what sort of level the children’s skills are currently at and give us a better idea of how challenging to make the game. As well as this we hope to see if the children are familiar with the video symbols.

Q and A…

Here are the answers to the questions we asked Sarah, the other day. Just getting round to posting it. Bear in mind these are brief and written after speaking to her, without taking any notes!

What shapes are the children at this age required to know?
Sarah lent us the Nelson Maths folder which contains the shapes the children are required to know.

Just 2d shapes?
2d and 3d shapes are needed.

Do the children just see visual representations of the shapes, ie drawn on the white board or do they get to handle and look at the shapes?
They see the shapes drawn on the board, they also get a chance to play with some 3d shapes and see what they look and feel like as well as how the shapes move i.e. roll.

How do the children learn best?
Seeing and doing. This gives them an idea of what they should be looking at and what to do with it. Repetition helps to get the information to stick in the children’s minds.

How do you ensure what the children are learning they remember?
This is more difficult, as each child learns at a different speed, however in general talking about what they’ve just done is useful and testing them in simple ways like getting them to draw you a shape, one they’ve just been learning about, is a good idea.

What material do you currently use to teach shapes?
We have 3 or 4 different softwares installed on the system which the children have access to, usually in the IT lesson. Although we do look at the games as a whole class and all play together. We have videos, which reinforce what we do in our maths lessons, and these can feature heavily depending on the circumstances.

Now we have some answers to our questions we feel more confident to carry on, knowing our game could actually be of use.

Finding out what the kids need to know…

Yesterday Suzanne went into Boringdon after school had finished to have a quick word with one of the Reception class teachers, Sarah Worley to ask her a few question we had come up with whilst brainstorming ideas and things we needed to research in order to make the game educationally viable and fun. Unfortunately Simon couldn’t make it this time, but we’re planning to go in after half term so he can chat with Sarah too.

Sarah was really helpful and gave us a folder with the maths the children need to learn in their first year at school, which has a massive chapter on “shape & space”. In the chapter are the 2 main areas we’re concentrating on, 2D and 3D shapes.

We read through the chapter in detail today and wrote a load of notes down. It states which shapes the children need to learn, the folder says they should learn 3D shapes first then 2D. Sarah said from her experience of teaching this, she finds it better to start with 2D so that’s what we’ll do.

So in amongst all the other information in each section there’s a list of what the children need to know in order to describe the shapes. As of September the curriculum is changing, the children no longer need to be able to name the shape i.e. “that’s a circle”, instead they just need to be able to describe what it looks like, i.e. “it has one side and looks like a wheel”. Although Sarah recommended we use the actual shape names to get the children used to them.

The 3D vocabulary for the required shapes is as follows, straight from the folder:

Boxes – box, flat side, corner, face, slide.
Balls – ball, round, shape, roll.
Cylinders – tube, cylinder, curved side, flat end, roll.
Cones – cone, curved side, flat end, point, shape, roll.

The 2D vocabulary for the required shapes is as follows, again straight from the folder:

Square – square, the same, straight lines, faces.
Rectangle – rectangle, straight sides, the same length as.
Circle – face, circle, round.
Triangle – triangle, straight sides, 3 sides.

As you can see the folder states the children need to know the names of the shapes, but like we said this is changing as of September. We also made the following notes having read through the folder, and possible solutions to the things we’re finding out:

3D shapes:
Children experience the world in 3D. The world is made of 3D shapes. They experience objects through using toys and home and at school. Most children understand the words box and ball but struggle with cone and cylinder.

How we could test their 3D knowledge?
The shapes come in different sizes and different colours, question how the shape moves i.e. slides or rolls. How many sides does the shape have? Get the children to point out where certain shapes are in a picture. Get them to create a house using 3D objects. Allow them to test their predictions i.e. Will the ball roll?

How to do it:
Create a list of movie clips based on the shapes that they will be learning. Extend these clips by animating the movement that these shapes will take if pushed. Create some shapes, which can be dragged around the stage to help create another object (house).

2D Shapes:
Children are already familiar with shapes but not in a formal sense. They are most familiar with squares and rectangles.

How we could test their 2D knowledge?
We could get the children to trace around a shape. We could further there hand to eye co-ordination skills by getting them to colour in the shape. This could be a free choice of audio prompt ‘Colour the circle blue…’ etc. Like the 3D shapes we could get the children to create a bigger picture using smaller shapes.

How to do it:
Create a list of movie clips of all the different shapes to show the children how to trace the shape. This can be backed up with audio cues. The flash screen will be drawable, which means that the children can trace around the shape using the mouse or stylus.

Design Proposal

As part of the coursework Katina requested our design proposals in for yesterday so she could read them and give us feedback today. Here’s our proposal:

Description of application:
Design and implement and game for children aged 4-5 (reception age) to aid them in their learning of shapes, both 2D and 3D.

Learning by doing – active participation.
Watch a video of someone drawing a shape, on part of the screen, then the child sees an outline of the same shape, which they are to draw over to gain an idea of how the shape should look, then finally the child is expected to draw the shape by themselves without a video or outline.

The closer the trace and their own attempt is to the original shape at the end, an audio cue and visual will appear to congratulate the child, if not close to the original shape an audio cue and visual will display to inform them. To feel as if the children are aiming for something and feel as though they are achieving, the more shapes they draw well, these will then combine to create a small entertaining 2D/3D animation.

There are elements of behaviourism such as observing demonstrations and receiving audio and visual feedback, for either drawing the shapes well or not. As well as elements of cognitivism – visual examples and comparisons.

                           

Learning Objectives:
• Hand and eye coordination.
• The drawing can be through either use of mouse, or graphics tablet and pen. The latter may prove to be more effective as it feels more natural. It will also give the children the opportunity gain confidence in using the computer, drawing and shape learning.
• Following aural and visual instructions.
• Learning variety of 2D and 3D shapes, based on the curriculum requirements.
• Gaining independence in drawing shapes, through use of video and trying themselves.

Plan for research and development:
• Visit Primary School (Boringdon) and talk to teachers to determine how complex the game should be for the children’s’ level of learning.
• Find out what resources are used now to teach the children their shapes and the game could be integrated into their learning process, simply for fun to reinforce the learning, or as more of an aid in teaching the actual learning of shapes.
• By making a series of prototypes, which can be taken into school to be used by the children and tested by them. Gain feedback from them; ask them simple questions, see if they are actually learning their shapes.
• Get feedback from the teachers and teaching assistants to see how effective they deem the game in the learning process, and any improvements and developments that they feel could be made.

Technology and platform:
• Flash, this will allow best for interactivity, buttons and user drawings. We can include movies into the game, to aid visual cognition. Flash makes it easier to make the game aesthetically appealing.
• Allows us to use ActionScript, which will be completely hidden from the user.
• We also have the option of updating, relatively easily, in the future should it be necessary.
• Able to run on Mac and PC, to make sure the game is compatible with the majority of systems available in schools.

Well….. Katina was really impressed, which is excellent! She had a few concerns, one being the state of the computer system in the primary school we wanted to use to test our software out on, but Suzanne assured her that Boringdon’s computer set up is really good and that it shouldn’t be a hindrance to us. The other suggestion was while prototyping, get the kids to peer assess each other, that way we’d get a balanced review of the game, from them and the teaching staff. Which we will of course be taking on board and doing.

We’re really keen to get on with this project, the whole design process is really exciting and being able to test it on real kids and see how they rate it is incentive to do a really decent job of it!

AI Illuminated (First chapter) – Coppin Book

Some notes on the above book:

1.1 – Introduction
 To be able to understand AI, it is useful to have an understanding of the background of primarily philosophy, linguistics, psycology and biology.

AI – Ability to deal with new situations
- Ability to solve problems
- To answer questions
- To devise plans

1.2 – What is Artificial Intelligence
Approximate definition:
“AI is the study of sysmem that act in a way that to and observer would appear to be intelligent.”
Another Definition:
“AI involves using methods based on the intelligent behaviour of humans and other animals to solve complex problems”(this definition takes into account of more prosaic problems…)

There are two different types of AI supposedly:
Strong AI:
Followers belive that giving a computer program enough processing power and providing it with enough intelligence it will think and is conscious in the same way that a human is conscious.
Weak AI:
Is the view that intelligent behaviour can be modelled and used by computers to solve complex proglems. This argues that a computer behaves intelligently does not prove that it is actually intelligent in the way that a human is.

1.3 – Strong Methods and Weak Methods
There are also two different methods:
Weak Methods:
Weak methods in AI use systems such as logic, automated reasoning, and other general structures that can be applied to a wide range of problems that doesnt always have to have any real knowledge about the problem that maybe being faced.
Strong Methods:
Strong method problem solving depends on a systems given a great deal of knowledge about its world and the problems that it might encounter.

1.4 – From Aristotle to Babbage
Aristotle, a philosopher from ancient Greece, who lived from 384 to 322 B.C. and who studied under Plato during that time. The wrintings of Aristotle have formed the basis for a great deal of our modern scientific thinking.
He invented the idea of the syllogism, which he defined as follows:
“A discourse in which certain things having being stated, something else follows of necessity from their being so.”

Charles Babbage invented the worlds first computer-the analytic engine, he never managed to build it. However, his designs were used to build a working model although it was loosely based on Babbages model.

1.5 – Alan Turing
One of the great figures in AI is Alan Turing. He famously worked in Bletchley Park, helping to solve German codes. He released the first paper written on this subject – Computering Machinery & Intelligence.

In 1956, the term Artificial Intelligence was first used by John McCarthy at a conference in Dartmouth College, in Hanover, New Hampshire.

1.6 – The 1960’s
In the most recent decades, the study of AI has flourished. Areas of particular importance include the following:
- Machine Learning
- Multi-Agent Systems
- Artificial Life
- Computer Vision
- Planning
- Playing Games (Chess in particular)

1.7 – Philosophy
In the 17th century, the great philosopher René Descartes was a strong believer in Dualism, the idea that the universe consists of two entirely seperate things: mind and matter. He believed that dualism did not extend to animals.
Descarte’s view was that the mind (or soul) was entirely separate from the physical body and not constrained by it in any way.

1.8 – Linguistics
The study of the human language has a vital role to play in AI. Noam Chomsky, proposed the theory of Syntactic Stuctures in the 50’s, this was a formal theory of the structure of human language. His theory also attempted to provide a structure for human knowledge, based on the knowledge of language.

1.9 – Human Psychology and Biology
Ai is related to Cognitive psychology, which is based on the idea that the human brain uses knowledge or information that is capable of processing in order to solve problems, make decisions, draw conclusions and carry out other intelligent acts.
This form of psychology was in contrast to behaviourism, which prevailed for much of the first half of the 20th century. Behaviourism relates behaviour directly to stimuli, without taking into account knowledge or information that might be contained in the brain. This is the kind of psychology that Pavlov was demonstrating with dogs.

1.10 – AI programming Languages
General programming languages such as C++ and Java are often used because these are the languages with which most computer scientists have experience. There also exists to programming laguages which are useful for AI projects, these are PROLOG and LISP.

PROLOG (PROgramming in LOGic):
- Is a language designed to enable programmers to build a database of facts and rules.

LISP (LISt Programming):
- Resembles C++ and PAscal
- Name suggests that it handles lists of data.

E-learning first lecture

We had our first E-learning lecture today. Some reading material… Why study education psycology? (cant remember authors name) HCI for kids – A, Bruckman. The lecture made me think of the Panopticon (Dream Building) and how the way social learning is though of.

We were told about the assignment, me and Suzie have paired up for it, we have some awesome ideas already. My first thought was to have a grand piano in 3D and the camera pans over and looks down on the keys, where the top of the piano is that would be where the information about the task would be. The user would be prompted with a piece of music which they would have to play by pressing the correct keys on the piano.

 If the wrong key is pressed then the user is alerted with both audio and visual ques likewise if its correct. There would be different levels to the task, for example if there was a user who could read music very well then they can turn off help.

E-Learning Brief

“In pairs, you are required to investigate, design and produce an interactive multimedia product which is informed by some aspects of the theories of human learning and following the design methods which are taught on this module.
We will be looking for designs which go beyond what is possible with conventional media and which have incorporated the lessons of the psychology of learning.
• Proposal (5%)
– One page per group outlining learning activity of your choice – which gives scope for an imaginative product taking full advantage of the capabilities of interactivity.
[Deadline: Thursday 31st Jan. email: katina.hazelden@plymouth.ac.uk]
• Design Presentation (10%)
– Group
[Deadline: Friday 29th Feb. In class.]“

This module looks like it will be alot of fun. I will be working with Suzanne for this one, we already have a few ideas, but its a secret…