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[kidsgames] Re: [Fwd: Kids Game Builder version 0.0.1]



Hello Chris,

On Wed, 29 Sep 1999, Chris Ellec wrote:

> > From: aleris@iag.net
> >
> > In that spirit I guess I have a non-technical question.  What do we want to use
> > as authoritative sources of information?  Generally math and the sciences are no
> > problem, because those subjects naturally scale with difficulty.  History
> > strikes me as a little foggier of a subject - a lot of what I was taught in
> > school about history turned out not to be true, but only convenient myth.  (Or
> > as one of my teachers told me once, "it's easier to teach this way")  My
> > background isn't in education.  How do we want to proceed about this?
> >
> 
> It is actually a touchy subject.

yep.

> I'm glad somebody brought it up.

:)

>  I think it is important to address the
> subject early on. Do we want our audience to be american children, or just children of any origin from
> any country.

My primary audience is my OWN children ;)  But I prefer to address ALL
children, not just American children.  A baseline should be universal if
possible.

> Obviously I favor the second solution.

:)

> One obvious way to do this is to provide support for
> foreign languages, which shouldn't be too hard with the kind of database we talked about earlier.

Some have suggested i18n, which is a good place to start I think.

>  A more
> subtle way is with content.

hmm culture specific content would work similar to themes, plug in a
diffenert "culture" and get a different mascot/naming
convientions/measuring system etc.  About the only thing that might stay
the same accross all cultural divisions would be general math.  It would
be nice to build this capability in at the beginning if it's feasible.
Also, the american child could pretend to be
british/australian/spanish/german/whatever simply by changing their
cultural region for a day ;)

> Using Tux as a mascot and other cartoon characters should appeal to almost
> any kids, right ?

Hope so, my daughter is already designing Ropher the Golpher and his
store.  More on that later ;)

> Well, how about a kid leaving in a city where there is no zoo, and he has never seen a
> real penguin before ? This might be a little far-fetched, but what I'm trying to say is that something
> that might seem like a given to some people might be completely lost on others, or might even be
> offensive to them ! Not to mention the influence you can have on kids, without even realizing it.
> 

See "cultural region" above and comment.

> For example, my wife (who teaches 2nd grade) is always amazed (and saddened) to see every year the number
> of little girls in her class who want to grow up "to be blond" because all their dolls are blond, and the
> books they read (while learning to read) have characters with blond hair. (I have nothing against being
> blond, this is just an example of how culture influences a child's development).
> 

ouch, that's truly sad.

> Right now, we can just focus of getting something done.  I just think we should pay attention to those
> kind of details once we start developing story lines and characters.
> 

I think it should be something we build in if it is feasible.

> Chris.

Sincerely,

Jeff Waddell
jeff@smluc.org


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