Projects Relevant to Mine

Interactive Installation by Untied Colors of Benetton in Costa Rica. 

They created an interactive game for kids which lets the kids control video mapping projection using a touch screen bubbles on the glass. They also created an interactive wireless game that could take pictures of the players and use this data to texture some graphic elements which also controls the decorative color lights.

 

Star Walk 

A science based app on the solar system for kids

StarWalk for Kids 2 is perfect for young space explorers who are interested in astronomy. With colorful images and friendly narrators, kids can learn about space, stars, constellations, planets of the solar system and grasp the fundamental principles of astrophysics.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouQyVz-dQKk

 

Alex The Explorer – Alex The Astronaut

Teaches the kids about various tools and how they are used for different purposes. Explore space, aliens, planets & more. Insight into various delightful sea creatures. Brilliant artwork, marvellous animation and fantastic sound effects make it an engaging game to play. The app has been simplified to make the interface kid-friendly.

 

 

Practical Work 3

I 3D rendered what one of the objects the children have to fond would look like, this is what the Mars object could look like with the QR code included that when scanned by a simple app loads the game for this object.

 

Academic Research

Play as a context for early

learning and development:

A research paper

By Margaret Kernan, PhD

• An understanding of play as a fundamental need and right of all children and central to their well-being offers a powerful construct with which to legitimize and secure the place of play in ECCE

• Adults have an important and active role in supporting children’s play. The precise nature of their involvement can be viewed as a continuum between indirect planning for play to direct involvement in the play

• Research in human development indicates that play encompasses an important role in the all round development and learning of children.

• The following types of play are considered the most salient forms of play with respect to children’s holistic development during the early childhood years: exploratory play, constructive play, creative play, pretend, fantasy and socio-dramatic play, physical, locomotor play, and language and word play.

• Children need to feel safe and secure when they play. However, it is important that adults balance children’s need for safety with the recognition that risk-taking and challenge are developmental necessities and are important for children’s well-being.

• Key aspects of the early years practitioner’s role in supporting the play of babies and young toddlers include providing a secure physical and emotional base and being responsive to children’s motivation to play and explore.

• A great deal of the play of toddlers relates to their developing physical and locomotion skills for which they exhibit great enthusiasm. Therefore, the play environment should provide challenge and freedom to move on diverse floor-areas, indoors and outdoors.

• Pretend and socio-dramatic play are important parts of the play of young children and are significant in their friendships. In order to support children’s pretend play adults need to be skilled observers, listeners and interpreters of the children’s play, and are respectful of their feelings, intellect, language, culture, and right to privacy.

• Opportunities for hands-on experiences are important for children’s development.

• Play and hands-on experiences continue to be of significance to children at the transition between early and middle childhood.

• Design considerations such as the provision of small spaces, den-making materials, pathways and boundaries are key elements in providing for opportunities for solitary, private, small group, and larger group play.

 

https://www.curriculumonline.ie/getmedia/1d8f2182-fdb8-4d29-9433-93e13ba27b20/ECSEC05_Exec3_Eng.pdf

Academic Research

Children’s Early Learning & Development: A Research Paper

By Geraldine French

Independent Early Years Specialist

Commissioned by the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment, NCCA.

• Through active learning, the baby, toddler and young child follow their personal interests and goals through first hand experiences of the world around them, individually, in pairs, in groups, in families, and in the community.

• Learning is a continual process of meaning making; it is not a linear input/output process. Active learning, physical and intellectual engagement with people (ideas) and materials (experiences), self and group directed problem-solving and repetition are at the heart of learning and development.

• The adult has a responsibility to provide rich environments where children are able to explore, touch, manipulate, and experiment with a variety of real life and diverse materials and where children can ask questions, make hypothesis and develop their thinking.

• Children learn in collaboration with others yet have to construct learning for themselves. True collaborative exploration takes place where all participants influence the direction, timing, and outcome of the investigation.

• The environment should offer children opportunities to actively explore, to work independently and with others, to make decisions and follow through with their ideas, to solve problems, to engage in real activities, and to experience co-operative, symbolic, dramatic or pretend play.

• Play is one of the key contexts for children’s early learning and development.

• Through relationships in play, children develop and demonstrate improved verbal communication, high levels of social and interaction skills, creative use of play materials, imaginative and divergent thinking, and problem-solving capacities.

• Adults need to plan for play and the specific interactions required to appropriately scaffold children’s learning.

• Young children do not learn in discrete units; they make connections across their learning with these connections changing and developing with new experiences.

https://www.curriculumonline.ie/getmedia/88b84797-73d5-4249-aa3b-0f861796c448/ECSEC05_Exec2_Eng.pdf

Practical Work 2

I generated a QR code using this website –  http://www.qr-code-generator.com

This is the QR code I generated:

I then attached an image to that QR code and scanned it with my phone to see if I could display the image

It worked very simply, the image would be replaced by the game for that object eg. An object that looks like Mars would have a game related to Mars on it including questions from the Maths & Science curriculum of the childs age.

Updated Idea

My previous idea was to embed the objects the children will find with microchips that will contain the specific game for that object. This causes some problems like cost for the microchips and the docking station USB and the possibility of it getting broken being used and touched by children.

To tackle this I’ve decided to instead to have a QR code on the objects that they will scan to play the game, this cuts down on cost as QR codes are free to generate and will not get broken from being handled or dropped making it child friendly. This QR code can also be scanned using a free app on a mobile device which would be connected to a screen where the game will be played.

 

 

Example of game play

1. Each game starts with the children being given an object to find on the main screen before they enter the play area. The children in groups then have to find the given object.

2. Example of the object hidden in ball pit

3. Example of how the object will be embedded with the technology to play the game, each object will have a different game based on the object and age of the children. Games will contain maths and science questions based on their curriculum.

4. Once the object has been found – the first team to find the object will score a point. The team will dock the object into the docking station and the game will play on a large interactive touch screen, similar to the ones found in many primary school class rooms.

Science Primary School Curriculum

Aims

The aims of social, environmental and scientific education are:

• to enable the child to acquire knowledge, skills and attitudes so as to develop an informed and critical understanding of social, environmental and scientific issues
• to reinforce and stimulate curiosity and imagination about local and wider environments
• to enable the child to play a responsible role as an individual, as a family member and as a member of local, regional, national, European and global communities
• to foster an understanding of, and concern for, the total interdependence of all humans, all living things and the Earth on which they live
• to foster a sense of responsibility for the long-term care of the environment and a commitment to promote the sustainable use of the Earth’s resources through personal life-style and participation in collective environmental decision-making
• to cultivate humane and responsible attitudes and an appreciation of the world in accordance with beliefs and values.

Science Curriculum
Science encompasses knowledge and understanding of the biological and physical aspects of the world and the processes through which such knowledge and understanding are developed. Through science education, children construct, modify and develop a broad range of scientific concepts and ideas. Working scientifically involves them in observation, questioning, discussion, prediction, analysis, exploration, investigation, and experimentation, while the knowledge and skills they acquire may be applied in designing and making tasks. Thus, science education equips children to live in a world that is increasingly scientifically and technologically oriented. Science education fosters a respect for the evidence of scientific enquiry, while the collaborative nature of its activities can also help children to acquire social and co-operative skills.

Investigations and problem-solving tasks nurture the inventive and creative capacities of children. Science education plays a key role in promoting a sensitivity to, and a personal sense of responsibility for, local and wider environments. It helps to develop an appreciation of the interdependence of all living things and the Earth on which they live. It encourages the adoption of responsible attitudes and patterns of behaviour towards the environment and so fosters the concept of people as custodians of the Earth for future generations.

The science curriculum

Primary science involves helping children develop basic scientific ideas and understanding, which will enable them to explore and investigate their world. In well-planned, practical investigations children’s natural curiosity is channeled and they are equipped with the strategies and processes to develop scientific ideas and concepts. The teaching of science in the primary curriculum involves the development of two types of understanding: conceptual understanding and procedural understanding. Children’s conceptual understanding is concerned with the development of scientific knowledge and with their deepening understanding of fundamental scientific ideas. The four strands of the science programme are Living things, Materials, Energy and forces, and Environmental awareness and care. These outline the knowledge and understanding that children acquire and describe the scientific ideas that they will encounter. Knowledge of the scientific process is sometimes referred to as procedural understanding. The section of the science curriculum entitled ‘Working Science scientifically’ outlines how children may engage in scientific enquiry. It is a procedural model of how scientists work and includes statements of the various component skills that contribute to this methodology. Children’s conceptual understanding and their procedural understanding are not developed independently: pupils’ understanding and application of the scientific process enable them to construct and refine their own framework of fundamental ideas and concepts in science.

Learning in science

The development of children’s ideas is central to science education. Young children come to science activities with ideas that they have formed from previous experiences. They use these ideas to make sense of the things that happen around them. These ideas tend to be limited to concrete, observable features and may be inconsistent with the formal theories of conventional science. The focus of science education will be on helping children to modify their ideas and to develop more scientific understandings. As well as planning science lessons on the basis of knowledge, skills and understanding, it is essential to consider the children’s ideas as the starting points for science activities and education. To change these alternative ideas or misconceptions it is necessary for pupils to become consciously aware of their ideas and then to have these ideas challenged and debated. Meaningful learning occurs when the pupils construct their understanding by modifying their existing ideas in the light of new insights gained from scientific investigations. Thus, science may be seen as the active process of the personal construction of meaning and understanding.

Maths Curriculum Primary School

Overview infant to second classes

Skills development

• Applying and problem-solving
•  Communicating and expressing
• Integrating and connecting
• Reasoning
• Implementing
• Understanding and recalling

Early mathematical

• Classifying activities
• Matching
• Comparing
• Ordering
• Number
• Counting
• Counting and numeration
• Comparing and ordering
• Comparing and ordering
• Analysis of number
• Place value Combining
• Operations Partitioning Addition Numeration Subtraction
• Fractions
• Algebra
• Extending patterns
• Exploring and using patterns
• Shape and space
• Spatial awareness
• 3-D shapes
• Symmetry
• Angles
• Measures
• Length
• Weight
• Area
• Capacity
• Money
• Time
• Data
• Recognizing and Representing and interpreting data interpreting data

Overview third to sixth classes

Skills development

• Applying and problem-solving
• Communicating and expressing
• Integrating and connecting
• Reasoning
• Implementing
• Understanding and recalling

  Aims – The aims of the primary mathematics curriculum are

• to develop a positive attitude towards mathematics and an appreciation of both its practical and its aesthetic aspects
• to develop problem-solving abilities and a facility for the application of mathematics to everyday life
• to enable the child to use mathematical language effectively and accurately
• to enable the child to acquire an understanding of mathematical concepts and processes to his/her appropriate level of development and ability
• to enable the child to acquire proficiency in fundamental mathematical skills and in recalling basic number facts.

Broad objectives

When due account is taken of intrinsic abilities and varying circumstances, the mathematics curriculum should enable the child to

Skills development

• apply mathematical concepts and processes, and plan and implement solutions to problems, in a variety of contexts
• communicate and express mathematical ideas, processes and results in oral and written form
• make mathematical connections within mathematics itself, throughout other subjects, and in applications of mathematics in practical everyday contexts
• reason, investigate and hypothesise with patterns and relationships in mathematics
• implement suitable standard and non-standard procedures with a variety of tools and manipulatives
• recall and understand mathematical terminology, facts, definitions, and formulae
  12 Number
• understand, develop and apply place value in the denary system (including decimals)
• understand and use the properties of number
• understand the nature of the four number operations and apply them appropriately
• approximate, estimate, calculate mentally and recall basic number facts
• understand the links between fractions, percentages and decimals and state equivalent forms
• use acquired concepts, skills and processes in problem-solving

New Idea

Problems with old idea

Instead of having this be a VR based learning game for children, as there are problems with it being VR. Them being:

• It is expensive
• Need a person who is experienced in VR who can set it up and fix any issues with it
• Can cause nausea
• Age advice being for above 13
• Parents are wanting children to be spending less time on screens
• VR is a very individualized and can only be played with one person

For the reasons above I have decided to use the same idea, an educational interactive space game for primary school children, but to make it more tangible and group friendly experience.

New Idea

My idea now is to create an indoor soft play area of the likes in a warehouse, that is space themed. The children have to physically search in teams for planets and stars which will be located in ball pits or other places throughout the play area. The objects they are looking for will be made of a lightweight durable material and will be embedded with a microchip which will be connected to a USB outlet. Once they find the object they are searching for, they will bring it to the docking station and connect the USB. The game will then be loaded which will contain maths and science questions based on their curriculum for the students ages. This incorporates a more playful and group based approach.

Game Play

There will be two teams, equally split from the group and they will be racing against each other to find the given object. The game will start The play area will be sectioned off into different themes so they know where to look for the given object. It will be a race against teams to find the object, the team that finds the object first is given a point. Eg. they have to look for the planet Saturn – they will go and look in the Solar System ball pit.

Moving forward with new idea

• Research math and science primary school curriculum, what are the aims and learning outcomes of these so I can know what the games need to incorporate
• Put together how I intend the play area to look, how the objects will look, how the docking station will look, how the games will be played