Child Technolgy & Research

Found a really good site called http://www.techandyoungchildren.org who have alot of information on best practises when designing technology for children.

The research section has some good stuff in it, one study assesses the impact of computer usage on children's behaviour and also how it can be used to benefit them. It may not be directly relevant but it does show two things:

1. Children have loads of time on their hands and it is becoming more and more common for them to spend it using computers and such. (see charts)
2. That's not necessarily a good thing! The negative behaviour touched on in the report may suggest that we should focus on using technology to get kids outside instead of inside in front of screens.

If you get a moment to have a flick through Technology and Young Interest Forum, which contains all of the 'appropriate practise' info.

EDIT: Title change to suit purpose, link changes to tackle irregular formating problems

Case: GPS Shoes

I have recently discovered an article about utilizing the global positioning system (GPS) for tracking children using a GPS device hidden in the children's shoes. This special pair of shoes has a distress button built in near the shoes laces, which would indicate when a child is in need of attention. This device would allow a parent or guardian to know exactly where their child is anytime during the day.

The shoes are available in March and are called "Quantum Satellite Technology" from the company Isaac Daniel with a price around $325-350.

This article shows that there is GPS technology in the world, which is small enough to fit into pretty much any device for the purpose of tracking. This could be utilized within our project.

The article on the GPS shoes can be found here

Case: Nicktropolis

Hot on the heals of CBBC, Nickelodeon are launching Nicktropolis, an interactive virtual world divided up into different zones that kids can do different activities in.

Although the article is very muh the same as the CBBC article I found before, it might be interesting to consider creating a virtual world for educational purposes, or even building an add-on to these already operational worlds (this would allow us to tap into the market created by these two companies).

We could create this world to have different zones for different educational purposes, making it very interactive and fun and using the so-called "Learning in Stealth" technique. We should discuss this at the next meeting as it would be preferable to a handheld device doing the same sort of thing.

For more information about Nickelodeon's Nicktropolis the article can be found here

Case: CyberDisplay

Found an interesting piece of technology currently being used in a kids toy called The Spy Video Car. The device is basically a remote controlled car, but the difference is that the child wears a headset that receives images wirelessly from a camera mounted on the front of the car. The user can drive the car in day or night conditions up to 75ft away.

More information about the technology behind the CyberDisplay can be found on the website (link below). I thought it might be useful to consider available 'trendy' technologies that kids would really enjoy using - apparently the toy was very well received at the International Toy Fair. Depending on the idea we eventually decide on, having a CyberDisplay may be something we can look into.

For more information about the CyberDisplay and The Spy Video Car the article can be found here

Case: Technology vs Blindness

This article is about how children overcome varying levels of blindness using technology to compete in a competition. The first thing that occurred to me is that someone, who worked with technology, must have one day decided that they wanted to focus their efforts producing a 'useful piece of technology' for blind kids. As we've spoken before, targeting a minority might be a good idea, as this will make the specification more specific.

The second thing I thought this article was useful for is to highlight pieces of technology that we might be able to use if we decided to target visually impaired children with our project.

The final issue that this article raised was how some of the technology these kids are using e.g. Braille typewriters, special laptops, specialised word processing applications are all adapted pieces of technology. We don't have to solve blindness with some sort of fictional piece of technology, we could just make blind children's lives better by taking something that isn't specialised for the blind and adapting it for example, an iPod that reads the menus and song titles and has Braille on the interface.

If you wish to find out more click here

Case: Child Obesity

After discussing creating a tool to promote healthy eating/living in children during the last meeting, I decided that it might be a good idea to find out some more information about it.

According to BBC Health (link below) currently 20% of children are overweight and 2.5% are severely overweight or obese.

The National Obesity Forum has a section of their website devoted to obesity in children (link below) and details a community-based programme called MEND (Mind, Excercise, Nutrition - Do it!). The page has a lot of useful information about obesity in children, such as the effects and ways to tackle it. The interesting point on this website is that they believe "A reward system (non-food based) may help to motivate children to achieve their goals and will act as a marker of accomplishment." The tool we produce could be this reward system, or maybe a combination between educational and motivational with rewards for achievement.

Link to the BBC's Health - Child Obesity website can be found here

Link to tge National Obesity Forum - MEND can be found here

Admin: Meeting 2

The second meeting is scheduled for Wednesday 1st February at 3-4pm (just before C++).

We need to further discuss ideas and make general progress with finding a useful piece of technology that we can develop. At this meeting we should also decide the date of the next.