KidsPlay - Ideas

• the kidsplay app would be cool if it was like kiosk, but for kids:)
• there could a parent account in KidsPlay which controlled which individual apps, and levels in those apps the children could play and it could also access statistics about each child
• instead of having it in kchart for data storage though, possibly use SQLLite (like the kopete stats plugin), and have a way to export raw stats to kchart and possibly a report in kword.
• also, if someone decided to write an edu app which wasn't in the main edu module, but the parent wanted the child to use, there should be a way of adding it into the kidsplay interface.
• programs that could be inside KidsPlay: KTurtle, Kard, blinKen, a simple paint program

Anders had started investigate a reading/writing program for young kids. The goal of this application is to train writing/spelling of single words. The application shows a picture, and a lineedit in the name of the pictured object can be typed. If the typed word is correct, the user can move on to the next word in a collection. If the word is misspelled, the user can be given the option to correct it, or view the correct spelling. If the word is completely wrong, the user will be told so, and given the option to skip to the next word. The application can be used by young students to improve their typing and spelling skills, or by older students to practice words in foreign languages.

pics/spellit.png

In this picture, the program shows an apple, and the user correctly suggested the word apple. After the user presses RETURN or pushes the arrow button, the program must respond and allow the user to move on to the next task.

pics/spellit01.png

Here, the programs responds by showing a text and two buttons. This is one way of managing the flow of the program, I think it should also be able to talk to the user by 'reading out' a text like the one displayed here.

Other thoughts and ideas
The buttons should be graphical and animated, so that the yes button nods and the no button shakes his head.
The application can load documents, each with a collection of tasks. Documents contains the graphics and the correctly spelled word and corresponding sound in one (or more?) language[s].
The application must have some (configurable?) fault tolerancy, either programmed (allow one or more wrong letters, or one or more wrongly positioned/swapped letters) or by using the spellchecker (if the word is wrong, is the correct word within the first 3 or 5 suggestions?).
The application could allow the user to pick from available collections/documents based on the users skill level or age.
The application must provide an administrative interface (configuration) available to the teacher/parent, so limit the available doucments and chose the response mode (text/sound/both), etc.
The pictures should be in svg format, so that they can scale well.
It is important that the application works well in fullscreen mode.
Some handling of word gender/cacophony is needed, so the strings in the response can be correct.
Documents should be compressed XML files with the svg graphics embedded and other objects (sounds) included as well.
The application could optionally keep statistics, like how many words was spelt correcttly, how many attempts was used pr word etc.

We can add other modes in that program. First the image is shown with 4 words, the kid must choose the word corresponding to the image (by dragging the correct word besides the pic for example). Second, the word is shown with 4 pictures and the kid must select the correct pic associated with the word.

An xml-based format should be defined to hold pic+word+sound. An open document format, in the style of OASIS (compressed XML with binary files aside).