"Creating Rich, Immersive, Interactive Learning Experience for Kids"

Objective

The focus of the project is to research, study the impact of and prototype software focussed on enabling passive, collaborative, learning for kids by providing a rich, immersive and interactive experience. The software would also provide the stakeholders
(parents / teachers etc) ways to measure and track kids' progress.

The "One Laptop Per Child" program provides an appropriate platform for executing the prototype, which may be developed as an 'Activity'(application) for the laptop, in line with OLPC's goal to open up the opportunities for children to explore, experiment and express themselves in a collaborative and supportive environment.

Introduction

OLPC has created the XO laptop to be very low cost, robust and powerful, beautiful and friendly. It has been designed explicitly for children of the elementary classes, the first one of its kind. A laptop can be transformed into a mobile school: a portable learning and teaching environment. A connected laptop is more than a tool. It is a new human environment of a digital kind. The XO is designed for the use of children of ages 6 to 12—covering the years of the elementary school—but nothing precludes its use earlier or later in life. Children don’t need to write or read in order to play with the XO and we know that playing is the basis of human learning. Moreover those digital activities will help the acquisition of the writing and reading skills.The XO has been designed to provide the most engaging wireless network available. The laptops are connected to each other, even when they are off. If one laptop is connected to the Internet, the others will follow to the web.

The laptop has an open framework that supports and encourages the very basic human need to express and provides a free and open source environment.The XO applications are called activities.


Proposition

The proposed activity to be developed is , A narrative intelligent story book system
This narrative intelligent story book system, which would randomly pick a story from around the world in the native language and read it out to you with illustrations on the screen in a comic book style. The stories will be maintained and downloaded from a server ,which includes local folk tales and educational stories. This will facilitate learning about different cultures and about relationships in children. They could be inspired to go ahead and change the ending of the story after a point in the story and submit their modifications. The most creative modified story gets a mention on the website.
Also , a dictionary will be incorporated in the system allowing the user to stop the narration at any time and learn about the words in the narration of the story. The user can learn about synonyms and antonyms , plural and tenses and of course the meaning of the word. The system would also actually speak and pronounce so that correct pronunciation of the word is learned. This can also be translated in a local language to also ,to facilitate learning of new language. A grammar usage as well can be learned by using the word in an sentence. Also, if the word's pictorial depiction is present in the storybook it would be highlighted.


Thus , the project would concentrate on the Interaction design to provide a rich and interactive experience for the kids.