[gcompris-devel] [GSoc]Games + ReadingWriting

[Bruno Coudoin]

Le mercredi 30 mars 2011 à 04:51 +0300, Alex Burghelea a écrit :
> Hi,
> 
> Sorry for the late delay, I had 2 deadlines for this week on my 
> university assignments.
> I have compiled GCompris and played a little with it.
> 
> Below you will find my ideas more detailed.
> 
> On 3/26/2011 6:47 PM, Bruno Coudoin wrote:
> >> at the dominoes i think that i could combine it with the spelling and
> >> writing case association.
> > tack toe, and dominoes
> >
> >> Another game i'd like to implement is Dots and Boxes
> >> (http://jocuri.clopotel.ro/Q7ij8IFL/Dots_and_Boxes/).
> >> I think this game could have great potential in being integrated with
> >> the Reading/Writing Category
> > Hum, Dot and Boxes does not requires any reading / writing skills.
> Sorry for that one ,  it was meant for the dominoes game.

Ok, no problem.

> I saw on the Idea Page the different levels proposed for dominoes, and I 
> think that I could implement
> some levels based on letter ( Case - Sensitive / !Case Sensitive  have 
> to decide which is harder)  and then numbers
> and finally a harder level with dots (double 6 or double 9 set should be 
> sufficient enough for kids ).

Great, I like this.

> The main part of the games I'm thinking of implementing the rules of 
> Block / Draw dominoes.

I don't understand what you mean here.

> I also want to write another domino game based on the rules from "5s and 
> 3s".
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_domino_games#5s_and_3s

Ouch, it's overly complicated for our target.

> But maybe bended to accommodate simpler math operations ( +/- simple 
> levels | */ : harder levels, or not at all).

Yes, doing a simpler may work but I am not convince yet. There are some
research to do to see if it makes sense on a pedagogical aspect.

> In this part I'm thinking at something interactive like math hints for 
> when the child is making a move that isn't the best one.
> Let's say that a rule is: "You get points by this formula sum of the 
> dots on your piece and the half you are connecting
> to."
> For example: If the kid has in hand 6-3 , 4-2 + other and the deck would 
> end with  4 **** 6  and he chooses
> to use 4-2 , the sum would be 10 < 15 (by playing 6 -3 ). Here is where 
> the math feature is bigger where a child is
> asked a question like "How much is 3 + 6 + 6?" .

Well, I thing that's it is way too complex.

> A final game I think of working on, is Connect 4. I would like to 
> implement an interactive tutorial,
> where the user is presented with some hints that will guide him to 
> victory and
> maybe even explain (somehow) why the current move it's good/bad.
> I'm thinking on a solution based on alfa-betha prunning algorithm.
> I hope that I made myself understood.

I understand, maybe you could extend this to other games we have. We
don't provide enough guidance throughout GCompris to help the children
when he makes mistakes. I am thinking to the awele activity which does
not show the moves so its hard to understand the rules. Also it could be
enhanced with helper to show the best moves. By the way, I did manage to
provide help in the lightsoff activities.

> For the reading writing category, I'm thinking that a calligraphic 
> application would be cool.
> But I don't know how it would be received by the users , because it's 
> limited to using graphic
> tablets.

There has already been work on this but it never succeeded. Yes the
hardware limits the use of this.

> I really want to know what's your opinion here.
> 
> I saw a game that gave me an idea for the Letter Classification
> 
> http://nobelprize.org/educational/physics/laser/challenge.html
> 
> At the end of the first level after talking to the police officer, there 
> is a challenge where
> objects come on a conveyor belt and they have to be categorized.
> I'm thinking of doing something where the kid has to select letter
> and put them on several places , so that he could form the words.

I don't know. I am not a teacher and I have a hard time imagining the
activity. 

> The dictation of letter i think would be fairly easy to achieve
> based on a a set of pronounced letter for every language that
> GCompris supports.  The pronunciation can be used in domino,
> especially for the level with non case -sensitive letter as hints
> to match upper to lower-case

Yes.

> I see the part with word pronunciation trickier
> because it needs a large database for different languages .
> A possible solution would be using ogg + Speex . I'm also taking in
> to consideration some linear prediction ( I had an assignment
> last year where I had to implement compression and decompression
> for voice prediction using wav files in octave) .

Space is not an issue nowadays. The voice dataset are usually optional
on GNU/Linux. Getting the data right with the propser licence is the
major issue.

> Do you think it would be enough for a GSoC application (or on the
> contrary , that I'm biting more that I could chew ) ?

I don't know, this is hard to tell without a more detailed proposal.
Also many things you propose are new to me and it would requires more
time to evaluate them.

> I will also add some bonus task to the proposal like checkers.

Checkers with an AI ? Would you code it yourself or integrate a third
party ?

> I will start to write the application for GSoC , and based on your
> feedback for this mail I will send you a draft by this weeks end.
> 
> I hope you like my ideas and look forward for your review.

Fine,

-- 
Bruno Coudoin
http://gcompris.net  Free educational software for kids
http://toulibre.org  Logiciel Libre à Toulouse
http://april.org     Promouvoir et défendre le Logiciel Libre