Get Creative With Learning

Abstract

This paper presents Word Out, an interactive game to train a child's creative thinking and problem solving capabilities through full body interaction. Targeted at children 4-7 years old, Word Out employs the Microsoft Kinect to detect the silhouette of players. Players are tasked to use their bodies to match the shapes of the alphabets displayed on the screen. Being explorative in nature, the game promotes creative learning through play, as well as encourages collaboration and kinesthetic learning for children. Over two months, more than 15,000 children have played Word Out installed in two different museums. This paper presents the design and implementation of the Word Out game and preliminary analyses of data collected at the museums to share insights on the potential of meaningful and engaging educational games that promote freedom and encourage creativity in the child.

Child-display interaction

“…Similar limitations can be found in [8,17,18,33]. In the context of child-computer interaction, other facets of touchless gestural interaction have been investigated, mainly in order to understand the effect of such novel paradigm in learning activities [1,5,26], but also for gaming purposes [4,5,12]. Several applications described in the literature employ users' silhouettes [14,36], but some authors opted for both "stick-man"-shaped avatars (e.g.…”

“…Considering such advantages of avatar-based interfaces in supporting adults' interaction, we aim at understanding whether similar effects happen also in child-display interaction. In fact, prior work showed how touchless gestural interfaces may facilitate learning in children [1,26], and how these can be suitable and have been widely adopted in serious games [5,13]. For these reasons, in our research we investigate the multiple facets of the children-display interaction mediated by an avatar-based interface.…”

Child–display interaction: Lessons learned on touchless avatar-based large display interfaces

“…Literature on avatar-based interaction has shown how this paradigm could be beneficial in supporting interaction with large displays for adults. In the context of child-computer interaction, other facets of touchless gestural interaction have been investigated, mainly in order to understand the effect of this novel paradigm in learning activities [1,5,29], but also for gaming purposes [4,5,13]. Other studies are more concerned with understanding how to design touchscreen interactions [36].…”

“…Considering such advantages of avatar-based interfaces in supporting adults' interaction, we aim to understand whether similar effects happen also in child-display interaction. In fact, prior work showed how touchless gestural interfaces may facilitate learning in children [1,29], and it is not a case that such interfaces have been widely adopted in serious games [5,14]. For these reasons, in our research we investigate the multiple facets of child-display touchless gestural interaction mediated by an avatar-based interface.…”