[kidsgames] Re: the younger set

[Jeffery Douglas Waddell <jeff@smluc.org>]

Hello Paul,

On Tue, 28 Sep 1999, Paul Kienzle wrote:

> 
> Hi! I have a three-year-old who is just entering the education system (my
> they start them early in England), so I don't have a lot of experience
> with educational software.

Wow already in formal schooling?

>  We have a few of the Brøderbund Living
> Books series which he quite likes, plus Creative Wonders Sesame Street
> Art Workshop.

Have a few of those, too bad I can't pass them among my friends who are
parents....

>  I haven't been able to run any of these under Wine [it
> isn't realizing the colour palette properly, and my feeble attempts
> to fix it made no headway],

I haven't tried lately, I might when I get some time.

> so I spent a couple of weeks writing my
> own StickerBook program (http://users.pwernet.co.uk/kienzle/stickers).
> As it stands, it may have a place in an early school art curriculum.
> 

Sounds wonderful, I seem to recall grabbing this at one time, but couldn't
get it to compile due to gtk library issues.  I wish that was being
handled better overall by the gdk/gtk/gnome people, but I'm not sure how
to fix it. Thanks for the program.

> With some minor changes to StickerBook (adding labels to the stickers
> and displaying them when they are selected) and some proper content,
> StickerBook could be used for introductory botany.

Wow! I don't think I would have thought about that, but you are right.

>  Have each
> scene represent a different geographical area, with stickers for
> the fauna and flora native to that area.

Great idea!

>  I wonder if any of the
> various botanical societies would provide images and sounds without
> redistribution restriction?

hmmm, I seem to recall some repository for this type of information
residing somewhere on the internet or in a university archive.  Perhaps a
quick message requesting such to the sci.botany or sci.biology news groups
would yield some quick results?  Would you do that, can you do that?

> I did a quick web search a while back, 
> but nothing leaped out.

Try dejanews and search the sci.botany and sci.biology newsgroups, hmm
another search engine to give a whirl is google.com.

> Natural history would also lend itself to
> this treatment, with each page dedicated to contemporaneous species.

This sounds like it could be a great addition to our suite.

> I suppose one could write a testing tool which requires you to paste
> a random selection of stickers into their appropriate niche. For me,
> I wouldn't want something that overtly "educational".
> 

Better get the content for the first two in place and then go for that
one.

> This paradigm can't be extended to the reveal the underlying ecology.
> For that, you need a simulation engine which allows you to create/destroy
> habitat, add/remove species, increase/decrease the temperature, etc.
> Perhaps lincity can be modified to this end.

freeciv may also have some insight.

>  Add a bit of random
> variation (how well generations react to different food sources for
> example) and you can get some evolution happening too.  [If you eliminate
> all the land based critters, how long does it take for a parrot to turn
> into a rabbit?]  I believe Maxis has something along this line, but I
> have no idea what they've done with it.
> 

This already sounds like a very cool game.

> If there is interest amongst the artistic types in the group, I could
> create an engine for animated story books.

Definately interest in animated story books from my children; they love
them.  Of course they love stickers as well.  Hope to have your
application running soon.

>  Grimm's fairy tales is a
> ready source of content (hey, it works for Disney), as indeed are any
> other collections of folk or religious texts.

I'm not sure what is in it or whether the content would be appropriate but
the guggenhiem project (is that the right name) has many free texts in it.

>  I would base it on the
> heart of StickerBook, with a few extra pieces such as text support, sound
> support (there are a couple of network aware audio servers which might
> work, but I don't have any idea how to sync them with the animation),

That is a very good question, there's esd and rplay, but without event
information it will be hard to sync.... hmmmmm

> and a good speech engine (with 20 or 30 languages, you don't want to
> ship audio for each of them).

even harder question.  All the speech engines that I've been able to find
are either proprietary software or free software based on proprietary (or
really wierdly licensed) libraries of speech.  I've started a project
personally to do text to speech that is completely gpl based on a phonics
book by Samuel Bloomenthal (sp) but I've been very disappointed in it so
far.

> This may be more than I can tackle alone, 
> but some of the pieces may already be out there.  Suggestions?
> 

I'm willing to help with both code and content.  Do you want me to put a
place on the web page specifically for this project or would you prefer
that I simply link to your site above?  I think I've given the suggestions
I can think of at the moment already.  I'll let you know if I think of
something else.  Did you see my database schema post, how does it fit/not
fit with what you are doing?

> More ambitious types could create "A day in the life of" book series,
> showing an individual going about their day.

This will require quite a bit of content, but also sounds very neat.

>  You could use this for
> teaching history (how does technology change day-to-day life) and culture
> (how do people in different parts of the world live).  For advanced
> students freeciv is another approach to teaching how history works if not
> the details of our particular history.

Hmmm, is where would you classify freeciv in skillset and skill level?

>  I suppose you could initialize
> it with an actual historical state, e.g., the Mediterranean at the time
> of the birth of Julias Caesar, and see how many classrooms end up with
> Rome conquering all.
> 

That would also be cool.

> Enough rambling.
> 
> Paul Kienzle
> pkienzle@kienzle.powernet.co.uk
> 

Thanks again,

Jeff Waddell
jeff@smluc.org

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