[squeakland] Etoys for touch screens

[Harness, Kathleen]

Subbu, 
What a great a idea! I know kids would love move shapes with their voice. Wait, I would love to move shapes with my voice!

The museum director said to focus on ages 4-8 for these projects. You might have noticed how low on the screen most of the things are. It is because they have a raised platform in front of the smart board and even with that, the youngest children can't reach much above the halfway mark. 

It was a different kind of project for me to design where I would not be there to help and where the project had to be pretty much self explanatory and sturdy. They are breakable but seemed to be resilient enough to be used by kids who had no instructions at all and just could explore a nice place and see what happens. I will let you know after a few months of use how director evaluates Etoys. 
Regards, 
Kathleen
________________________________________
From: K. K. Subramaniam [kksubbu.ml at gmail.com]
Sent: Friday, October 12, 2012 2:19 AM
To: squeakland at squeakland.org
Cc: Harness, Kathleen
Subject: Re: [squeakland] Etoys for touch screens

On Thursday 11 Oct 2012 1:37:15 PM Harness, Kathleen wrote:
> Good Morning All,
> The link is to a set of Etoys projects for the Orpheum Children's Science
> Museum in Champaign,Illinois.
> http://etoysillinois.org/library?tags=At%20the%20Orpheum
>
> The director asked that the projects be made for very young visitors to play
> with independently using the smart board in the museum's lobby. Perhaps you
> might find a use for these projects too. I would welcome comments and
> suggestions if you try them with children. Regards,
Nice projects!

You state 'very young visitors'. I would expect such kids to explore
interaction through voice. You could have projects that use sound attributes
(e.g. pitch - move, volume - turn) from the world menu to control movement. I
am sure there are folks in this mailing list who can come up with suitable
computations to detect noise, applause, sighs, yelps and whistling. It won't
be long before the kids learn to whistle tunes ;-).

Regards .. Subbu