Being a first time dad has been the most amazing experience of my life. Watching my daughter grow, and witnessing her constant exploration of the world around her has been extraordinary. Unfortunately when Mondays roll around, it is time for me and many other parents to drop off our kids at the babysitter.  The amount of time we get to interact with each other is very minimal, and pretty sad.

In a world where we all feel so “connected”, the people that matter most have no method of remotely interacting with us.  My 1 1/2 year has no twitter, or Facebook account to update.  She doesn’t check into fourSquare every time we go to grandma’s house. Even with mobile phones and Skype video conferencing, there is no direct method of me interacting with her without the assistance and supervision of an adult. So basically, we could only interact with each other when another adult has both the time and is willing to put in the effort to set up an environment for us to communicate.

This got me thinking “how can my daughter and I interact during my work hours?”  The first thing I did was identify the main characteristics of my daughter, back when I first started working on this project:

• My daughter was one year old.
• Her vocal communication ability was in the preliminary stages of development
• Her motor skills where still not fully developed, so complex tasks like using a keyboard or mouse where not possible.
• She needs adult assistance to use our everyday communication tools that available to us (moble and land-line phones, computers, etc).

At this young age, children are extremely dependent on their parents and other adults for just about everything.  However, there are also several activities that come as naturally as breathing and eating to a child. Two of those activities that i observed where exploration and play, many times triggered by a common catalyst of curiosity.

Children gradually explore their environment and toys and interacted with them, mastering the new skills that they learn along the way. Quickly they are able to identify all sorts of toy input locations which triggered various types of output, such as audio and visual feedback.
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A little over a year ago, I was drawn to this marvelous device, named the iPhone. All the possibilities that it could bring opening up another outlet for me to develop applications for. Seeing the possibilities, like many developers, I ran out to the nearest Barnes & Noble and bought an “Introduction to iPhone Development” book. I diligently went though each and every chapter, getting acquainted to Objective-C and the iPhone development environment. Then it hit me! Do I want to be an iPhone Developer or a Mobile Developer? What happens when Android gains market share? What about Windows and BlackBerry? iPhone’s reign could only last for so long, and the pack is slowly creeping up.

The iPhone revolution placed blinders on us all, and many of us forgot the obvious. Remember years ago, when you would go to a site only to be greeted with a “Sorry we do not support your current browser, this site is optimized for IE 6″, you would be forced to close you current session on the non-IE browser and open up IE to view the site. What a pain! Eventually, javascript libraries like JQuery, and the adoption of CSS standards have made that less of an issue, although you still see this once in a while. The main difference however between the browser wars, and mobile wars is that browser all interpreted HTML and CSS, with only slight differences. Mobile phone native coding language on the other hand are extremely different. iPhone coding looks very different then Android, which look different the Windows Mobile. That means more resources need to be allocate on a project, costing the perspective client more money. Not exactly a smart investment, and unfortunately there is no “Export to Android” option in Apple’s XCode software.
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I have always had a fascination with trying to understand how the things around me work. It just so happens that after having a child, most of the thing around me are toys. Large toys, small toy, blinking lights, sounds, singing, haptics, interactivity, it is all pretty darn amazing when you sit back and really look at how much technology my little one year old daughter navigates and interacts with during play. Many time when we think of children and technology we automatically think of desktop computers and video game consoles. Although all of these are examples of technology the only interaction my daughter has with them is me telling her, “don’t touch”, and handing her a toy to distract her attention.

I decided to take a trip to my daughter’s toy collection to examine some of the sensing capabilities that her electronic toys offer. I will specifically focus on the toys input capabilities:

(At the end of the post there is a video of me trying to figure out how the LeapFrog Tag Jr works. Let me know your thoughts.)

Fisher-Price Elmo Live Encore

This is by far one my daughters favorite toys. The toy is modeled after Elmo, a Sesame Street character, which most children a quickly drawn to by his bright red color, large eyes, and youthfully fun voice.

Inputs

• Push Buttons: Typically buttons on toys are visually obvious, however Fisher Price decided to create an exploratory interaction by spreading out four button throughout the plush doll. Three of the buttons are hidden under the fabric, on the toe, chest, and back, and the final button switch is closed by squeezing his nose.
• Tilt Sensor: One of the nice additions that the creators added to the toy was integration of a Tilt Sensor. When Elmo falls on his side, he politely ask for help to stand backup, which is sometime accompanied with a joke.

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The Games for Learning Institute was gracious enough to invite Will Wright, the genius behind games such as The Sims and Spore, to speak about “Why Games are Good for Learning”. I’ve watched him speak in the past via youtube videos, and have always been impressed by the insight he brings to the gaming industry. Games such as SimCity, have broken down so many boundaries and have help in redefining several aspects of gaming. He has managed to empower children, though a constructionist approach by giving them the ability to become producers of their worlds, and not merely consumers. These ideologies fall in line with much of Seymour Papert’s work with LEGO and LOGO along with the ideas of Maria Montessori.

The secret of good teaching is to regard the child’s intelligence as a fertile field in which seeds may be sown, to grow under the heat of flaming imagination. Our aim therefore is not merely to make the child understand, and still less to force him to memorize, but so to touch his imagination as to enthuse him to his inner most core. — Maria Montessori

Why Serious Games are not Fun
This was an obvious question to start off the talk. Read more

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After learning that Apple’s new iPad came minus a camera, I, like many people, was pretty surprised. Could it be the money aspect, “I doubt it”. There definitely is room for it on the device, so what gives? Here is my prediction. Asides from typical casual photography, the iPad will try to answer some business problems that it has had in the past, such as video conferencing. In order to do video conferencing however you need the camera to be mounted on the the front face of the iPhone. This is great in theory, but then creates a problem when you are trying to use the phone as a casual camera by not allowing you to see the display. It also puts a major damper on Augmented Reality, which has been a hot topic impossible. People have suggest front and rear camera, but that just seems like a usability nightmare, and expensive. You can’t forget Read more

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As I watched the unveiling of Apple’s new iPad, I noticed many different reactions in the educational community. Some people expressed how the iPad will revolutionize education, and others how it will negatively effect it. In reality however, the answer is quite simple. “Will the iPad be good for education? MAYBE!”.

The reason that I say “maybe”, is due to several factors. Mainly, it is too early to pass any judgment since hardware doesn’t automatically mean good software. If we look at desktop computers there are a slew of educational games and software, yet most are useless and ungrounded with any educational theory. So does this mean that it is bad? No, it means as educators you will have to collaborate with your personal network of fellow educators to identify all the good software available and develop strategies in how to integrate it within a classroom environment. Not exactly a new concept, yet it has been one of the major stumbling blocks in educational technology in general.

With most technology, I like to step back from all the hype and really analyze the hardware for what it is. Although the App Store is not saturated with amazing educational software, that shouldn’t count it out of being a viable platform. So let’s break it down to affordances and Read more

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Today i was able to attend Augmented Reality: is it for real and why should you care?, which was hosted by Sobel Media.

According to the Sobel Media website:

Augmented Reality may be new to your lexicon, but if you watch televised football, it’s already part of your weekend routine: the “1st and 10” line is a leading example of this emerging technology. From Esquire magazine to James Cameron’s blockbuster “Avatar,” technologists are redefining photo realism by integrating graphics from the screen with our real-world environments. Augmented reality blurs the line between what’s real and what’s computer-generated to enhance what we see, hear, feel and smell.
At our next event, we’ll explore and predict the business potential for Augmented Reality…from advertising to marketing, to entertainment and education…and beyond.

Augmented Reality is nothing new, however the barrier of implantation are what have kept the technology from flourishing, much like rise and fall of Virtual Reality, which i predict will be making a comeback soon. Through the use of opensource software such as the Flash based implementation of ARToolKit by the name of FLARToolKit, it has enable the experience to be accessible to Read more

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co-authored by: Adrienne Schafer

Background

Young children learn how to recognize and identify things such as numbers and letters at school. What they don’t learn from their teachers is how to recognize and properly express emotions. This is something they are expected to learn at home, but if a young child has been abused or lives in a household where the only emotions they’re exposed to are negative, they don’t have the opportunity to gain emotional intelligence and build emotional literacy. Young children need to be taught how to properly recognize and express their emotions to fully realize their potential and to avoid unnecessary conflict in school and social settings.

EEMIO, which stands for Enabling Emotional Instruction & Observation, is a physical toy coupled with a web site that provides children with activities and lessons that help them build their emotional intelligence or EQ by developing emotional vocabulary, also known as “feeling words” as well as coping mechanisms for emotional situations. A child’s inability to express or recognize emotions can lead to behavioral problems which extend to the classroom and ultimately affect their learning experience. By understanding and learning to identify different types of emotions, children can apply methods of self-regulation.

It can be difficult for adults such as social workers to get children to discuss their feelings if they try to sit down and talk about it. Allowing young children to interact with a toy and web site provides a level of safety and familiarity that encourages them to open up more. This approach allows adults to expand on topics the child might have touched upon during their interactions with the toy.

According to the Emotional Literacy Campaign at www.feel.org “ ‘Emotional Literacy’ is the ability to recognize, understand and appropriately express our emotions.”
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Many museums have incorporated what they describe as “pervasive computing” via handhelds in their exhibits. They are using technology to help cultivate a two way interaction between the art and the viewer, on the viewers terms. The goal is to produce a better museum experience for visitors, intrinsically motivating them to spend more time there.

There are several techniques that museums are using for this sort of interaction. They include Location Aware handhelds that estimate the visitors location via GPS, RFID and WiFi. With the surge of smart phones in the past couple of years, and especially with the iPhone 3Gs that comes embedded with a compass, this sort of interaction will become more and more available.

“Customer resistance, capital cost and reliability have all been taken care of. The age of pervasive computing has finally arrived” – Alex Pentland MIT

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I’ve read a lot about Scratch, a visual programing language that was developed by the fine people at MIT. However, I never actually took the time out to play with it, so I finally signed myself up and decided to take it for a spin. Since I’ve recommended this site to several friends that want to introduce their kids to programing, i figured I should check out the product for myself. I was especially curious on what a child could actually get out this application, and if it could lead to learning some basic programing skills.

Scratch is designed to help young people (ages 8 and up) develop 21st century learning skills. As they create and share Scratch projects, young people learn important mathematical and computational ideas, while also learning to think creatively, reason systematically, and work collaboratively. – MIT

I decided to give myself a small project to test a wide variety of functionality. Not knowing the versatility of Scratch, i decided to create a quick proof of concept and create some very basic game interactions (Left, Right, Jump, and Collision detection). Once i made myself at home, and started getting acquainted with the interface, i just started exploring. The first thing i noticed was there was some vocabulary changes that would be better understood by a younger audience. For example, what is typcally called “Loop” is called “Forever”.

The language offers all the main syntax that makes up just about all programming languages, such as loops, conditionals, and variety of properties, along with several other options. Here is my proof of concept (http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/abritez/783281). It’s nothing fancy, but enough to make it clear to me that any person with a bit of prior programing knowledge could get something rolling rather quickly.

The real question is, can a kid with “no” prior knowledge learn on this platform. I am pretty convinced that some kids could get some sort of interaction happening with Scratch after some exploration, trial and error, and bit of guidance. As i mentioned before, the programing language is visual, and includes scaffolding for the children in Read more

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