[kidsgames] Linux Letters and Numbers

[Jeff Waddell <jeff@smluc.org>]

I FINALLY GOT SOMETHING TO WORK!!!!!!

After installing ALL of Gnome for Potato (Debian Version 2.2), I found
that I STILL could NOT compile either Linux Letters and Numbers or
Stickers.  This was highly frustrating to say the least.

I FINALLY discovered that my machine did not have the proper imlib stuff.
After installing the gdk-imlib-dev debian package....

apt-get install gdk-imlib-dev

for those of you on debian,  they both compile and run fine....

Ok, so now down to what I think.

First, this thing is GREAT!   My son (Mercer 3.5) was enjoying it today...
He was able to get the pictures on the screen and say "Hey Daddy! Look!  A
giraffe!!!" and the like....  Thanks to Kirk Ismay for this kids game.

He had some trouble with the keyboard in that he did not want to let go of
the key he was pressing and the program just cycled through picture after
picture and usually by the time he let go it had gone away....  He's not
very proficient with the mouse yet, so that was not really an option for
him....

Things I wanted it to do, was to SAY the word along with the picture to
reinforce the word.  One of the reason for this is because pictures have
many aspects to them that can be focused on, that may make the child
confused.  A case in point.  The Xray picture is understandable a
skeleton, which is exactly what my son called it when it came up on the
screen.  It was difficult to explain that yes that was a skeleton but that
the symbol was an X for Xray....

My daughter (Clare, 6) wanted it to make sounds associated with the
picture, such as the trumpeting of an elephant, and the sound of an apple
falling to the ground for the apple (not sure if that would really relate
or not).  One could easily expand that notion to animated/real film clips
of the object in action.

If I knew the coding aspects of where to put it I would very much like to
put sound support (even something as rudimentary as "cat Balloon.au >
/dev/audio") in there....

Things that I think would make this program even better:

a) multi-language support so my children can easily hear
and see foriegn language alphabets and vocabulary....

b) bunches of pictures and sounds so that it has a myriad of
words to learn.

c) make the words it chooses from come from a user selected (or
parent/teacher selectable) list.  

d) make it display words with the same beginning letter in alphabetical
order cycling back to the first one when done.

e) give it a configuration panel, to allow choosing things like sound
support, random vs. alphabetical display, where data is located, etc.

f) have a program to gather the pictures and sounds together.  Gimp works
to make pictures to a degree and perhaps maybe just a plugin to gimp for
specifically manipulating the files for this game is in order.

g) instead of storing the files in the filesystem, and using their names
to decide how to display them, I think it would be best if they came out
of a database.  This would preferable be the database we've talked about
before and that Brian Thompson has started working on and actually has a
Starbase database started.  It hasn't made it to the list because it is
too big :)  As soon as I can get it done I will start an area on
sourceforge.net and place that database into the cvs there....

There are myriad advantages to using a database for this, including
it can be both local and served from a main repository, this means that
you can add personal lexicon information to your local database without
publishing it to the world, and still have access to all the data that HAS
been published to the world at large...the database can more easily keep
track of what data goes with what... i.e. the program just requests the
a picture of a word starting with X and it gets one, without having to
look in the local share directory.  Publishing data that becomes
quickly available to programs using this database without requiring
modification to the programs is much easier.  It could even be done
via a web form I think...  This same picture
can be used by another program without having to know anything about the
/usr/local/share/lletters/images directory....

I'm sure there are drawbacks to using a database, but I'm not yet sure
what they are....

I hope this will spur some discussion and perhaps bring some more people
to our project....

Kirk, again, thank you for this wonderful program.

Kirk PLEASE join us on the kidsgames mailing list (subscribe kidsgames in
the body of a message to majordomo@smluc.org) to discuss this and other
aspects of kidsgames.  You can review the mailing list archive at
http://seul.org/archives/kidsgames and read a little more about the
project at http://smluc.org/SIA/kidsgames/

Thanks

Jeff Waddell
Kidsgames Project Coordinator

-
kidgames@smluc.org  -- To get off this list send "unsubscribe" in the
body of a message to majordomo@smluc.org