Today i decided to take trip to my wife’s school in Newark, NJ to see how Pre-K children liked the How Tall Prototype. Overall i got some pretty positive responses.  Bellow is a video of one of the children interacting with the game.  Unfortunately, i think most of the kids where distracted with the webcam video. When i do a more formal test I may use a handheld camera instead.  I think they where also a little shy with me in the room, so next time i may just have my wife run the test since they know her and may be more comfortable being expressive without a stranger in the room.

The video reveals something that should be noted. There was the success in using the response queues through the audio. If you look at the students mouth you could see her counting along, which assists in giving the child a more active role in learning.  It is hard to gauge the success of the the use of Wiimote, but I may looking into doing an engagement analysis another day.

How Tall Test from Alex Britez on Vimeo.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Originally, i was going to build some accelerometer hardware to capture motion, but I’ve been tremendously busy.  Instead, I decided to take a stab at checking out some of the open source AS Wii libraries (Google Code).  The game itself is nothing to write home to mom, but I am interested in possibly researching the advantages of leveraging advanced inputs such as the WiiMote to better engage children. I think i may extend this game a bit more, and run a controlled group of children playing my game with the WiiMote, and children playing a similar game with the mouse.  Not sure if this would influence any additional knowledge transfer, but may influence children to play longer and more repetitive, which in turn may have some effect.  More on this topic when i totally wrap my head around the idea.

Wii How Tall from Alex Britez on Vimeo.

Popularity: 1% [?]