Tangible Edutainment Interface for Children: A comparative study of two commercial devices

Introduction
Tangible electronic devices have become an inseparable part of our lives. We see and use them in our work place, in the public space and at home as personal entertainment devices. In the last couple of years several new devices have been introduced to the home entertainment industry, specifically game consoles such as the Nintendo Wii®, the Microsoft X-box® and the Guitar Hero®, which contributed to transformation in the way we engage technology. These new modes of interaction are accomplished through the use of high resolution graphics, interaction interfaces and input devices that connect the user’s motions to real-time outcomes in the game’s environment. In other words, the appeal of these game consoles lies in the direct connection between the user and the game itself, and the feeling that each physical motion has a reciprocal action in the virtual world. Following the success of the aforementioned products, the children’s educational game industry was quick to follow the emerging trend and began creating game consoles that combine educational games with physical gestures, based on the connection between cognitive and motor skills for optimization of the learning processes.
In this paper I will show the advantages of employing these types of games in child development and how the physical interface can help to extend children’s cognitive knowledge. For this purpose I will review the literature that has been written about interfaces, educational software, games, cognitive development and interaction of children with educational software. Following the literature review I will compare two relatively new commercial game consoles: Fisher Price’s Smart Cycle® and Vtech’s V-motion®.
The knowledge base used for writing this paper is taken from online movies of children using the consoles, manufactures’ information and other available online product information. Due to the large variety of compatible video games for each console, this paper will not focus on the video games themselves nor their interface but rather on the physical devices and the extent of their ability to interact with the user in light of the cognitive benefits they promise.


Literature review
In order to start the discussion about tangible interfaces in educational games I would like to first define what is a game. Roger Caillois defines “Game” as something that contains competition, chance, vertigo and mimicry (make believe). In other words, a game contains both elements from the virtual and make-belief world and from the real world (e.g. competition). Players of games perform actions that reference real-world activities but at the same time they are actively aware that they are “in the game” and that their actions do not have immediate effect in the real world. Yet, in educational games the goal is to perform actions that will have influence on the user’s real world knowledge, which means that some parts of the mimicry process need to have influence on the ability to change concepts and ideas in the child’s mind.
The first person to create a rational educational game was Fredric Froebel, who understood the importance of operations like analysis and synthesis in early childhood, to the creation of mental modals. Froebel created “Gifts” that encouraged children to actively interact with basic shapes, colors and 3D objects in order to create complex forms and structures in the context of a game. Froebel’s ideas about simple and basic concepts that are taught in early ages and become the foundation of other complex mental models are still relevant in cognitive development theories.



In my comparative study I will refer to the following three categories:

1. Cognitive age compatible- the video game consoles that I will study are designed for ages 3-7, this age group is referred to as “The Preoperational Period” according to Piaget’s cognitive development theory. Children in these ages have specific cognitive abilities, for example, they can understand the world in more than just a sensory-motor way but they cannot perform mental operations on their perception and cannot change their perception unless the world has changed. Also their ability to reason is very limited and involves only one-way reasoning skills i.e., if A causes B, then B causes A. However, at age five children are already able to play strategy and memory games and understand clear and simple rules. Only at that age do children start to use objects not only for their real world purpose but also as a representation of other objects. Furthermore, although adults will learn better from a multimedia experience of images and text, children’s comprehension in our examined age group, will be better when the content is represented through images and animation alone, despite having started to develop reading abilities. These properties ultimately define the way in which this age group will interact with video games. For example, a four year old child will most probably not be able to play a game which has a complicated narrative and demands the use of a controller that differs considerably from the object it represents.
2. Active learning- researches showed that students who learned new information from an active learning media (e.g. video game) demonstrated a better ability to understand and remember complex ideas and concepts than students who read verbal instructions. Active learning improves the ability to recall and understand knowledge because the learner is encouraged to directly manipulate the object of interest, for example, pushing buttons, making decisions, telling stories and more, hence this kind of operation creates a stronger connection in one’s mind between the action and the concepts learned. Moreover, active learning sometimes involves several representation formats of input and output such as text, graphics, sound and more. Multimedia information that is sensitive to cognitive load improves the ability to take information from working memory and put it in long term memory, because the information is presented or integrated in more than one modality.
Buckleitner’s study shows that the more control a child is given by the game’s interface, the more active the child will be in the game itself (represented by the amount of solved problems, answered questions etc.). In other words, environments that allow children to take control in the game will lead to active behavior which in turn enhances the active learning process and improves the learning process of educational content.
3. Interface – there are many guidelines for multimedia and educational interface design for children in the literature. This topic is broader than the scope of this paper, yet I will try to address some guidelines that more specifically refer to physical interface:
Physical gestures- children showed better ability to pull out details from their memory when they were asked to make gestures that where connected to those details. Since children in early ages have limited verbal abilities they tend to rely more on modality-specific representation of concepts and ideas, using their body state. By synchronizing bodily gestures with the concepts or knowledge that is being taught, children remember and understand the concept much better. For example, in-order to teach children the difference between big and small, asking them to make big gestures and small gestures with their hands can create representations of big and small concepts that will accumulate by rehearsing which create mental models of this knowledge. There should obviously be a link between a user’s actions and the effect of these actions in the game environment, so that the created mental models will in fact be valid or useful. Also the physical interaction should be based on the natural way children use their body. The use of the tangible device should be natural and obvious to children and support parallel use of motor and cognitive processes. When the motions are not natural but compete with one another or with the cognitive process, they have no meaning to the child and can cause high load on working memory.
Buckleitner showed that when interacting with conventional input devices, children had difficulty using a mouse and tended to make repetitive clicks, some intentional and some unintentional, that represented their emotions (excitement or frustration) . Another aspect of physical interfaces for children is their need to fit a child’s body size and to be physically easy to use. The device also needs to have a high degree of physical durability for extended and unexpected use which is usually not the direct intention of the child but rather a byproduct of his actions.
Working memory - according to researchers in cognitive development, children have less strategies to process information and to hold information in working memory, therefore it is very important to prevent working memory overload. This goal can be accomplished in many ways. One example for tangible interfaces can be synchronizing the visual presentation with the physical motions that are been performed. For example, if the user makes a pulling gesture which translates to the opposite action of pushing on the screen, then that can cause working memory overload. Another way is to reduce redundant information, especially in parts where high cognitive workload is needed (e.g. when an important concept is been taught). An example of this situation can be a physical interface with lots of colors and buttons in which only a few actually work or create new information.
Feedback- the interface should provide both physical and virtual feedback. This information should relate to the knowledge that is being learned as well as the errors and actions that the user has made. The information can be conveyed in the form of audio, tactile, narration, visual, motion, or through the use of several modes at once (without creating cognitive load). Feedback is a very important phase in any learning process since it helps the child understand the process of problem solving. Once a problem is solved the solution of similar problems leads to an increase of cognitive constructs in long-term memory and thus to the construction of knowledge.

The question I would like to address in this paper is how do educational motor video game devices contribute to the building of mental models of simple concepts?

The cognitive process involved in educational video games. The diagram shows the path from the video game itself through the device which reinforces the concepts learned during the game via working memory and the creation of mental models.

the Fisher Price® Smart cycle®

Vtech® v-motion®

Discussion
Both the Smart cycle® and the v-motion® consider themselves to be interactive motion-based educational game consoles. However, they differ in the way they address the connection between the virtual concept and physical motion. Although compatible in terms of their target age group and providing an active learning environment, I think that the lack of synchronization between physical gestures and concepts being taught reduces the Smart cycle® to the level of a standard video arcade game and not an educational motion-based console . Children interacting with it perform two different sets of operations: the first operation is physical, i.e. paddling and moving the handlebars and the second is the mental operation of problem-solving presented by the virtual interface. Since these operations do not correlate with one another there is not a lot of benefit to gain from the physical motions in terms of the learning process and knowledge construction. Furthermore, the physical motions do not give the console any added value when it comes to creating mental models compared to a regular video game.
On the other hand, the v-motion® demands from the child to perform a large range of motion that either mimic motions shown on screen (e.g. kung-fu motions), mimic motions from real life (e.g. hit a tennis ball with an imaginary racket) or perform motions that have immediate outcome in the game environment (e.g. tilt both hand to the right in order to shift characters on screen to the right). These kinds of operations demand more cognitive work load at first but also help the child to create mental models of the performed concepts, for example, right and left, fast and slow. The learning process is close to the way the acquired knowledge will be used, thus it will be recalled and remembered more easily in the future.

Conclusions
Motion-based educational games have become popular in the last few years as a new paradigm in video game culture supported largely by technological advancement. But not all motion-based games have the same benefits regarding the learning process of mental models and their creation. A game console that strives to maximize the benefits of motion and education needs to synchronize the concepts been taught with the body gestures and to make the learning process as close as possible to the way the knowledge will be used in real life. I believe that game consoles like v-motion® can be used to teach and reinforce abilities that concern the cognitive development in young children (ages 3-7). For example, according to Piaget’s cognitive development theory children in these ages start to understand conceptual ideas and are able to go beyond sensory-motory skills and use their imagination. However, they are still not cognitively developed enough to perform mental operations, think about virtual objects and understand complex reasoning. Game consoles can help them learn concepts like the once Froebel taught in his first kindergarten – color mixing, relations between sizes and shapes and locations (here and there) – by active learning that incorporates body gestures and multimedia. This kind of learning process can give knowledge a better chance of becoming a mental model in the child’s mind. Furthermore, towards the end of the Preoperational period (ages 7-8), children start to have the ability to perform mental operations on virtual objects and to solve strategy and memory game. In this stage educational motion-based games can be used to help children perform mental operations and solve scientific and strategy problems by using motion controllers that can give immediate feedback in the form of 3D graphic animations.
Since behavioral activity alone does not guarantee cognitive active learning, some issues such as the incorporation of multimedia environments (i.e. video games) with the physical motion-based devices and the cognitive engagement of the user when playing the game, can be further examined to better understand whether a complete active learning process is performed via game consoles like the ones compared in this paper.

to a full lenght paper with references

La Big Mac

Several thoughts about McDonald’s:

It seems that McDonald’s makes fun of their costumers, take a look at their last commercial video.

Indeed climate changes, point of view changes, culture changes and social changes are equal to stinky fried chicken sandwich. For me it is a little bit too much, I don’t expect McDonald’s to be honest about the quality of their products, and I can totally understand when they try to sell me greasy industrial food by saying that it is healthy and has all the nutritional ingredients I need. But please don’t mess with my ideological issues, and don’t make me believe that by changing my breakfast from a McDonald’s beef to a McDonald’s chicken, I’m going to be a nonconformist or help prevent global warming.

Finding the lost ring is a popular multiplayer web game that combines the virtual and physical worlds. This game began in February this year when a strange package was sent to several people who are involved in the games industry (which also includes educational games). Since then it evolved to a global interaction game that includes hundreds of people all over the world who speak different languages (English, Spanish, Dutch, French, Japanese, Mandarin, Portuguese and Esperanto (who speaks Esperanto...?)) and connecting with each other through Wiki and forums. The game will come to an end on August 24^th, the closing day of the Olympic Games. This is an interesting game because it has a very broad background story which contains all sorts of historical and theoretical details. It seems that it caught the public’s attention and people all over the world are connecting with each other, willing to go outside, solve some puzzles, build mazes and even perform some activities inside them.

Well, now I need to push in my big foot and talk about the things that I dislike in this game. First, the game in sponsored (or shall we say invented) by McDonald’s, and this fact is not a hidden secret, the company logo appears at the end of the first movie released, and on the other movies as well. Moreover, McDonald’s is one of the Olympics major sponsors. This small fact does not settle with one of the game’s ideological themes. The game speaks about choices, free will and the fact that every time we make a choice, our path of life changes and we have another branch in our tree like a scheme of untaken choices (“The road not taken”, “Sliding doors” and so on). It is a little bit strange that a discussion about free will comes from McDonald’s, I’m not saying that a company like McDonald’s can’t encourage a discussion about free will, I’m saying that one of the important qualities someone (a person, a company, a corporation) needs to have in life is a little bit of self-awareness. This discussion could have been interesting if it was held in a serious manner, and if it would have brought to the table some real questions regarding free will in a capitalistic world. Instead McDonald’s prefers not to deal with the questions, but to throw an idea, without stating their purpose or making a point, but instead choose to disguise their influence on this game, which in my point of view is a not an honorable thing to do. I have nothing against commercial companies sponsoring cultural events but I do have something against commercial companies trying to pretend their interests are innocent.

Second, at first glimpse the game looks like an underground initiative, something that can be connected to a fringe culture. But then when I took a second look it all seemed too organized, well done and produced. The second look changed everything for me. Suddenly I couldn’t really believe the story because it was too well filmed. In other words, it is made too well, a fact that doesn’t sit well with the fringe or underground feeling that the game tries to give its players. These kinds of games/movies/TV-shows have to have a very reliable storyline, which keeps reaffirming itself. It is especially when the story asks its readers to actively participating in the story. The players have to believe in the story.
Third and last, the story has a few discrepancies in historical facts and dates. That is just a shame, what do we have Wikipedia for?

And to conclude the McDonald’s discussion, try this short game. It’s a very nice flash game that will make you laugh and think about the additional side-dishes you get when you order a “Big Mac”.

Cartesian world

Decisions. It appears that today it’s really hard to choose, most of the times when we need to make a decision we have 3,587,623 options, not two or three or five. Not long ago we could represent our data world as a linear system: There was good and bad, heaven and hell, it was very clear on whose side you’re on. But then, something changed and suddenly our way of storing and processing data transformed, its structure mutated from linear to tree-like. Some say it started after World War II when political changes led to change in ethics and intellect. Others believe it started with the industrial revolution when the term growth adopted a new set of mathematical rules. It is agreeable that today, our world of data looks very different than it previously did. It is very complex, and contains a multitude of inseparable factors. Our data system became so sophisticated that it is hard to understand it and grasp it in one’s mind without using tools and new methods of visualization/representation.

The last issue of “Wired” magazine was dedicated to the “Petabyte Age”. They stated that enormous amounts of data with ever-changing environments (real-time) changed the way we used to think about almost everything. They gave examples for predicting future global violent areas by analyzing news from around the world, or predicting election results by analyzing very specific voting population behavior (there are lots of companies all around the world that will pay good money to have a reliable prediction about the upcoming election in the US), or predictions of unexpected events like terror attacks that have a significant impact on local insurance rates.

It was a very interesting discussion that showed how this flow of data changes “cold” numbers and influences mathematician and analysts, as well as the way we approach daily problems and the way we understand the world we live in.

On this topic, take a look at this video from the TED conference, it is a little bit long, but I can guarantee it’s worth every second. In this short talk Michael Pollan discusses a new thinking approach towards sustainability. If you really can’t spare 17 minutes to see this video you can jump to minute 9:50, and only listen to the example he gives.
I think the example is fascinating, and it really made me feel that maybe sustainability is not such an annoying word, and that this mess we are in right now in terms of global warming and too much consumption may have very simple but smart solutions.

The second topic he talks about is the fact that although our world had tremendously changed, the way we conceive it hasn’t changed a bit since the 17^th century. We still see the world as a linear system, where there is a direct relationship between action and consequence, where there is good and bad, beautiful and ugly, nature and man-made. Although we live about 300 years after the beginning of the industrial revolution and 70 years after World War II, most of us still see the world through Cartesian glasses. And it is not surprising since we are educated to think this way. When we think about big events and powers that effect us (things that are bigger than us: economy, for example) we can understand that they have various modalities and multi-relational systems, but it is still hard for us to understand that we are not in the Cartesian world any more when we think about the everyday aspects of our life as well.

you can see the battle between the traditional Cartesian way of thinking and the dual contemporary one in the movie industry. In the last couple of years ordinary Good Vr. Evil stories get a new twist. I'm talking about movies like Batman and James Bond. It is interesting to see these movies because they used to have a very simple story-line, a very known and good ending and they are been made for sever years now so we can compare the new sequals to the previews ones. For example the new Batman (not like the old Tim Burton's Batmans)presents a twisted hero, who actes humanly and most of the times find it hard to decide. So, heros no longer save the day, and you, the small man, can't always count on them. The movie also makes an exstensive use of Game Theory and the Prisoner's Dilemma, which brings us back to- decisions.

My new iPod

My dear husband bought me an iPod (nano).

I looked at it, all white and shiny, lying still in its small perfect box. It seemed to me that this small, maybe too small, device will have great power over me. And so it did.

The iPod is an amazing device, it’s tiny, plays hundreds of songs, and has a great sound not to mention an intuitive interface. But above all these elementary qualities, it pumps information directly to my brain without any agent to buffer between them. Unlike its big brother “theWalkman” it’s tinny and almost unnoticed and there’s no need to mess around with it for example: change sides, or change batteries. Thus it has a great ability to influence me. I want to talk about a couple of ways in which that influence comes into play and its consequences.

The first one is also the obvious one and it is the disconnection. The iPod helps us to actively disconnect from the world. The reasons for disconnection are many and different from one person to another, but I think they are all pretty similar in essence: too much information, too much pressure and too much self-hatred. Or as RadioHead said it better-

So we do want and need to disconnect, especially in the mornings. I called mornings in the Subway or any other public commuting transportation- “the glossy eyes show”. A bunch of people stuffed into small mobile spaces, nobody talks, and everybody has this strange look in their eyes as if they are being operated by some machine that is stuck in their brain and somebody forgot to turn it on. Since everybody is nasty and grumpy in the mornings, but needs to be optimistic and enthusiastic the moment they walk into the office, it makes perfect sense to repress those feelings in the short time you have on the train. Some people read books or newspapers while others listen to music or combine the two. Listening to music is the best way to disconnect without a doubt. Since reading allows you to hear the surrounding background noise, it needs your attention and connection. Listening, on the other hand, asks for nothing, you can look at other people without really seeing something, you can empty your head completely from thoughts and the best part is that nobody will try to talk to you since they assume you cannot hear. So here you go, disconnecting.

Now let me pull you out of this dark alienated picture, with the second one. The iPod has the role of playing the soundtrack of our lives. With the iPod our surroundings change rapidly according to the track that is been played. Personally, most of the time I’m saving the world, in the Matrix style: jumping on the ceilings, from high-rise rooftops to the sliders of a chopper or breaking a well protected governmental office building.

When the right track is played I can do almost anything, with the right track I can ride a chopper against the direction of the traffic, while with a different track, somebody is watching me and I am on a daring international spy mission. On the third, I’m seconds from being discovered as the next top model of the universe. By the fourth I’m the lonely hero that’s having all his life flash before his eyes.

My life is not as dramatic as I used to think life should be, (or maybe it is and I’m too busy in chasing robotic agents that I can’t see it) so my iPod helps me to add extra excitement. I think it’s a novel role, and it’s much cheaper then LSD pills.

One last thing, it seems iPod has replaced cigarettes. A couple of years ago, when I needed to wait for someone or kill some time, I always wished I’d never come early or just wanted a smoke. People who smoke can never look bored or as if they are doing nothing. Today I have my iPod, I can listen to my music with glossy eyes, and without the possibility of thinking that someone else thinks I am doing nothing. If I really want to look preoccupied, I can always scroll my music list up and down, up and down. And that’s hard work!

Next time you see me walking down the street smiling with my ear buds stuck inside my ears, you can be sure, I just killed agent smith.

Graphs are flying all over my place3

Here, we go again, my monthly (or so) calculations.
soon, I will be Count Von Count...
(since I've moved to the US, I've started to document my life by creating two kinds of information's documents:
The first, maps that describe my familiarity of the close surrounding.
The second, documentation of new people, culture and concepts. )

Happy Passover!

About Landscpe and Hollywood

Two important events have happened since the last time I wrote,

I started a new job as a landscape architect (which is my original profession) and I saw the much debated movie “No county for old men”. Those two events made me think about the concept of reality and its representation, one of my favorite topics.

Landscape architecture is a funny profession; it’s always bouncing between the boundary of art and design, and can’t really decide what it is, but one thing is for sure, landscape architecture is always related to the local culture. You can see an advertise from some other country and find it persuasive enough to go out and purchase the product, you can play a video game in a different language than your mother tongue and still feel the agency, but most probably you wouldn’t want your private garden to be absolutely different from what you are used to in your immediate surroundings. If you’re one of these people that think a traditional Japanese garden will suit your modern house like a glove to a hand, think about the number of adjustments that you’ll want and need to make in the “traditional garden”. All this is said to indicate that gardens are a major cultural representative. Since I started working I had the chance to see, experience and create cultural features which are not originally mine. I started to realize that I have a serious cultural problem. I noticed that designs which looked exaggerated to me are pretty common in New England, while on the other hand, simple and modern design which I would consider desirable design will look pail and dull to my bosses. I’m trying to make the design as simple as possible; my bosses try to decorate it.

And then I noticed a very strange thing- American landscape design is exactly the same as its images, as its representation. It might sound strange, one can say: why won’t it be the same as the image?”, “WYSIWYG(what you see is what you get)”, but, if you’ll think about it, in the modern world you get used to NOT getting what you see: Eifel tower is much lower than its image in the pictures, the image on the readymade food boxes wishes to be close to the picture, and most of the show business people don’t look so pretty in real life. You get used to these small disappointments, or in other words, most of the time the representation of realty is much better than reality itself.
As a “devoted” landscape architecture student, I used to spend a lot of time looking through books that contained color pictures of gardens and landscape design. These books usually came from the United State, England or Western Europe; the pictures always describe a late spring garden full of green lush vegetation, brightly colored flowers and soft sun light. Since I used to having lived in a country that has two short months of spring, hot summers and 310 days of very bright sun light, these pictures always looked a little bit fictitious to me. Plus, because these are almost the only source of images for landscape design as well as inspiration, they became a cliché. There were too many images of the same thing. The gap between my familiar reality and the overflow of these representations made me think that this photo-reality in not real.

Let’s go back to my job- when I started working I didn’t expect to actually be part of a design group that creates these cliché’s, but apparently, the images that looked unreal to me when I lived in Israel are the very vivid reality for the people of new England, and the Americans tend to nurture that representation of reality because the majority of our clients want us to create what I term as cliché’s.

Now I’ll try to connect it to “No country for old men”. Well “no country…” deals with the meaningless of events and death, but I don’t want to speak about this, I want to speak about the movie’s set- about the landscape.
“No country…” takes place in Texas in the late 80’s. My husband used to live in Texas in the late 80’s, so I asked him if Texas really looks like the movie, and he said:”yap, it does.”
Well, that made me have even stranger thoughts about this movie. It was said before that Hollywood creates representations that turn to be elegantly reality due to the power of the medium. When we talk about movies that has a very specific setscape, the imaginary reality of the movie’s plot, projects on the scape itself and the fictional part of the movie becomes the reality of the landscape. “No county…” shows unreasonable violent, not in the sense of “too much”, but in that it has no reason, the violence in the movie has no cause. It makes the movie a bit surreal, it made me feel as if the movie is a fictional one. But the movie has a real time and place, which are very real, and as I came to know, a very good representation of Texas in the 80’s. These two dimensions of reality create confusion between the real and the fictional, or in other, an uncertainty between the depths of fiction.

Since we arrived in the USA, suburbia and mustached Americans tend to freak the hell out of me.
I blame it on Hollywood and landscape architecture books.