Monday, September 28, 2009

What Pyschologists say about my project

#1 “A trilingual edutainment can be confusing at first, but ultimately beneficial if stimulation and guidance is consistent and motivational!”

#2 “Just a little exposure to another language can help 4-6 year olds think about language as an object. It may increase their interest in other cultures or increase their tolerance and understanding of children from different linguistic backgrounds”

Pocoyo



The first reason for Pocoyo's success is because of the characters' movement. They move, speak and laugh just like kids.

Precedents

Precedent

Dora the Explorer : Bilingual, interactive with kids

Pocoyo : Learning through Laughter

Sesmame Street : Non profit, monolingual, targeted all over the world, character development(every year come up with a new character),originally created for children in poverty who had no opportunity to receive education

Scholastic: Game for math, language, science

ClubBing: Similar to Scholastic, Advanced game technique

What’s common about them? Young learners, character driven, edutainment

What do I dislike about? Most except Dora are monolingual (missed opportunity), LACK TRILINGUAL OPPORTUNITY
-→ They are all edutainment but none of them are trilingual.

Survey for Specialits

1. What is children’s favorite color?

2. According to the brain development, how important it is to learn foreign languages in preschool age?

3. Are children of 4 to 6 years old capable of learning more than two languages?

4. What would be the best way to teach children foreign languages(games, television, parents’ teaching, having foreign friends, etc)?

5. Could you give any advice about the trilingual edutainment project? Things that creators should know about?

Survey for Parents

1. How old is your child(children)?

2. Who is your child’s favorite character?

3. What is his/her favorite color?

4. What is his/her first language? If any, what other languages he/she knows?

5. In your opinion, how important it is to learn foreign languages in preschool age?

6. Are you willing to teach your child more than two languages?

7. In your opinion, what would be the best way to teach children foreign languages(games, television, parents’ teaching, having foreign friends, etc)?

8. Could you give any advice about the trilingual edutainment project? Things that creators should know about?

9. As parents, are you willing to buy trilingual edutainment product for your children if it’s proved to be effective?

10. Please feel free to elaborate your opinion about two prototypes(game and animation) Which works well? Which doesn’t? How would you develop it for better communication?

Thursday, September 24, 2009

Feedback on working prototypes

- Think about how the project can be more interactive
- Focus what do you want to teach. Alphabet, number, or phrase?
- For game, consider for more narrative.
- How about a muppet show?
- Watch 'Pocoyo' and observe the kid's movement

Glossary

Animation: the consecutive images of 2-D or 3-D drawings in order to create "an illusion of movement".
Cognitive Development: mental development that makes people think and learn
Education: learning process
Edutainment - blend of education and entertainment
Fun: a source of enjoyment or amusement
Game: an activity arousing amusement
Interactivity: influencing each other
Preschooler: a child who attends preschool and generally ages between 4 and 6.
Language: a system of communication e,g, voice sounds, gestures, or written symbols.
Lexicon: vocabulary that a person knows
Multilingual: two or more languages
Rhythm: the pattern of musical movement through time
Key terms: Trilingual education, children and media, edutainment, cognitive development, lingual development

Target Audience

Primary Audience - Preschooler

Secondary audience- Parents, Psychologist, Educator -

New York Public Libara: Film Viewing Event






Observation:
- 5 min attention span
- Kids follow/imitate peers' action
- They like to watch character jumping falling

Two Protoypes

The Three Monsters: Storyboard

Game Prototype

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Update

Educator: Dr. Howard Steele at the pychology Department
Electronic version about Erik Erikson's model of development

"It can be confusing at first, but ultimately beneficial if stimulation and guidance is consistent and motivational!
etween 18-24 months when children learn 300-400 words, and by 6 years of age they are familiar with 15,000-30,000 words, while the typical adult has a lexicon of 75,000 words they are familiar with."

Parents: Bilingual Mom's community -> go to the event when I have no class