Case: Reading Tools & Software

I thought it might be a good idea to see what sorts of technologies are currrently available to help children learn to read. One article I found was very interesting and can be found here. It details a new technology being developed by BravoBrava! listens to a child reading (using voice recognition technology) and then displays helpful information when the child struggles on a word. For example, the image belows shows a piece of text the child is trying to read, and at the current point, the child is struggling to read the word Butterflies, so the system displays the Butterflies on the right hand side and then gives helpful information about it so the child understands what the word is:

The system has many features, such as knowing how well the child has read in the past, providing a cartoon character to interact with the child and a easy to use interface. We should study the design if we end up prototyping the word scanner.

Case: Story Time Won't Help Reading

A study by Université de Moncton has shown that reading to children during story time may not actually improve the child's reading ability. Their study monitored where the child's attention was when someone was reading to them and the results show that the child focuses primarily on the images in the book, and not the words. Traditionally it was thought that reading to children would help their reading abilities but these results contradict that, as children can't possibly become familiar with words that are being read to them without focusing on them.

This article is interesting in regards to our word scanner. It raises two issues. The first is that the word scanner shouldn't just read the word, but offer the child to find out information about it too, so that they learn it. Secondly it shows the importance of researching how a child learns how to read, especially when they come across unfamiliar words because traditional methods may not actually help.

The article can be found on the CBC News website here.

Child Computer Interaction Group (ChiCI)

After the lecture yesterday by Janet Read from UCLAN, I decided to investigate the ChiCI website.



Here are links to some useful relevant documents I found on the site that hopefully will prove useful when developing the word scanner device:

Guidelines for Handwriting Recognition Interfaces for Children

Errors in Handwriting Recognition based systems when used by children

Admin: Supervisor Meeting 1 Summary

Supervisor: Mike

Attendants:
Ashley Harris
Elliot Hyde
John Saunt
Adele Tyler

Apologies:
Mark Mitchell - feeling too ill to attend university.

During the meeting we discussed use cases with Mike, however we are still unsure about the difference between use cases and use scenarios; we intend to carry out research in this area shortly.

Mike raised a good point about our word scanner device, he said that the dictionary would have to be tailored for children because standard adult dictionaries are hard for them to understand. We need to ensure the word definitions do not include hard to understand words.

Mike also suggested we should eliminate one of our 2 main ideas as soon as possible so we can focus all our efforts on developing the final idea, we will do this during tomorrows meeting.

Admin: Supervisor Meeting 1

Our first meeting is scheduled for Wednesday 21st February at 12:15 with Mike. I'm guessing the room will be the same as the one on the timetable.

I suggest scouting the 117 Physics West room near 12pm to check if it is the room we are in. If anyone has any concrete information on where the room actually is, I'll try to make adjustments to this post ASAP.

There will also be additional supervisory sessions in Computer Science 124 at 1pm, I suggest we turn up for this session too so that we've met with a supervisor twice (like we should have done by now).

Admin: Meeting 6

The sixth meeting is scheduled for Thursday 22nd February at 3-4pm (just before C++).

We will attempt to discontinue one of the remaining two ideas and then focus on the last. To do this we will need the Questionnaires, Use Cases and Personas ready.

We will then decide the next meeting, most likely next Monday.