Despite all the work that goes into developing educational media, even the most stimulating television programs and video games keep children still. Researchers at the MIT Media Lab hope to change that with a system called Playtime Computing that gives modern meaning to the term “computing environment.”
The prototype of the Playtime Computing system consists mainly of three panels extending to the door behind which the projectors are located; a set of ceiling projectors throwing images onto the floor; and a cube-shaped remote-controlled robot called Alphabot, with infrared emitters in the corners that track ceiling-mounted cameras.
But the system has been designed in such a way that differences between its technical components disappear. Together, the three panels offer a window into a virtual world that, thanks to the projectors, seems to unfold in front of it. Most remarkably, when Alphabot heads toward the screen, it slides into a box, several robotic leaves close behind it, and it appears to simply continue rolling at the same speed down the side of a virtual hill.
“We kind of see it as one reality,” says Adam Setapen, a graduate student in Professor Cynthia Breazeal’s Personal Robotics Group, who helped design the system. “One of the things we’re really excited about is having two of these spaces, one here and maybe one in Japan, and when the robot enters the virtual word here, it comes out of the virtual world in Japan. This fits into the concept of one reality where there is one robot, and whether it is physical or virtual depends on the state of the robot in the Playtime Computing system.”
Children being children
According to David Robert, another graduate student who worked on the project, the goal of the system is to provide children ages 4 to 6 with opportunities for what developmental psychologists call “imaginative play”: early experimentation with symbolic reasoning and social roles that is crucial for development cognitive. Setapen adds that researchers also want to get children out of their chairs.
“We like the idea of a big space where they can run around and be active and be kids,” Setapen says, “because they learn a lot by moving around and interacting with each other.” “Obesity in children is a serious problem,” adds Robert. “Michelle Obama has an entire campaign called Let’s Move to promote more active play.”
Setapen, Robert and their colleague Natalie Freed built a set of wooden symbols that could be attached to Alphabot’s face – so named because it resembles a giant alphabet block. Each symbol contains an RFID tag, and inside the Alphabot is a tag reader. If your child changes the symbol on the Alphabot, the Alphabot’s face will change color to match the color of the symbol. And if the robot rolls onto the screen, the virtual Alphabot will also display a modern symbol.
The symbols include letters of the Roman alphabet, Japanese characters, a heart and a pair of musical notes. As children attach notes to Alphabot, music begins to play from the system’s speakers, illustrating the principle that symbolic reasoning can cross over sensory modalities.
Another essential element of the system is what researchers call the Creation Station, i.e. a table computer on which children can arrange existing objects or draw their own pictures. Whatever is on the tabletop can be projected onto projectors, giving kids direct control over their surroundings. “You might have one kid drawing spiders,” David says, “while his brother runs around trampling them.”
Creating, not dictating
“We are on the verge of rediscovering how important and central play is to learning,” says Joe Blatt, director of the Technology, Innovation and Education Program at Harvard Graduate School of Education and a longtime producer of educational television programs and video games for children. “One of the things that makes play so important to children’s development and learning is that it provides the opportunity to act creatively, to be creative, not just to receive.” This also applies to early experiences with information technology, says Blatt. “It is very important that children learn as early as possible that what is happening on the other side of the screen, what is powered by computer technology, should not be seen as something that simply exists or is simply provided by others, or which it’s meant to be taken for granted, but rather that you can have as much influence over it as you could create something from a box of blocks.
To make the Playtime Computing system even more interactive, the researchers equipped baseball caps with infrared light emitters so that the same system that tracks Alphabot could also track children as they play. This would allow on-screen characters – or a future, autonomous version of Alphabot – to interact directly with children. However, researchers are hesitant to start experimenting with the new Microsoft Kinect, a gaming system that, unlike the Nintendo Wii, uses cameras rather than controllers with sensors to track players’ gestures. Kinect could offer a low-cost way to track movement in a Playtime Computing environment without children having to wear headgear.
Scientists say the Alphabot prototype used several hundred dollars worth of off-the-shelf parts, and if the robot were mass-produced, its price would obviously drop. The researchers believe that simple and inexpensive versions of the Playtime Computing system could be designed for home use, while more elaborate versions with multiple multi-functional robots could be used in classrooms or museums.
Through several informal experiments, researchers began collecting data on how children actually use the system. Several children immediately began to press many symbols onto Alphabot’s face, something the alphabet is not yet prepared for. Others inserted non-Alfabot objects into the box that provided the interface between the real and virtual worlds, expecting them to appear on the screen as well. “We want the aspects that move between the physical and virtual worlds to be very different because that’s what kids seem to really love,” Setapen says. “We would be very grateful if a child could take their favorite toy and put it in the cage and a digital model of the toy would appear on the screen. For children, it’s not much better.”