Sketch-based educational games: “Drawing” Kids Away from Traditional Interfaces

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Summary

This paper discusses the use of sketch-based systems for child education and skill development. There are four basic styles in child education and development auditory, visual, tactile, and kinesthetic. Most technology work with auditory and visual styles in education whereas sketch based system address the need of children who learn better from kinesthetic and tactile methods.

Six games are discussed in this paper which helps in the development of different skills.
APPLES game allows user to draw planets and then draw arrows for planetary motion and gravity with a spiral gesture. It familiarizes children with basic concept of physics at an early age. It uses the LADDER framework.

Simon Says Sketch game allows player to draw six sketches and the player must then remember the order in which two shapes changed their color and then mark those shapes with a stroke. The number of shapes that change color increases at each round.
Go (Sketch-a) Fish game the player draws a set predefined shapes and then surround it with rectangular box to make it a memory card. It then hides the card and allows a friend to memory. It also uses the LADDER framework.

Sketch-based Geography Tool is simple geography tool that allows maps to be presented to children for labeling through sketch.
Learn Your Shapes! Game is a tool that allows children to learn their basic shapes through sketching. It utilizes the sketch recognition that can automatically recognize if the child has drawn the right sketch. It also allows the children to draw the shapes in any manner without any constraints.

Sentence Diagramming is a tool for automatically providing feedback about hand drawn sentence drawing. It has also been implemented on the LADDER framework.

Discussion

It’s a fun paper talks about a totally different domain in which sketch recognition can be applied. Too bad the author couldn’t find children to test his games ;). Btw what are IRB constraints?