How exactly does one tackle interactive media for children?

Right off the bat, analysis of the psychological studies related to child development and learning is essential to properly understanding how to design for children of certain ages and with different skill sets. It was interesting to see highlighted the differences in cognitive and computer-related abilities by age group. It is often easy to forget that not all computer users approach software with same abilities. The example of a child being able to use a mouse well enough to click on several colorful icons but not well enough to navigate away from a message prompt was especially informative. Mouse control and navigation, therefore, must be measured appropriately.

I found myself most attracted to the Social Constructivism theory that children accumulate and stack knowledge, but that this knowledge is understood independently. The teacher acts as the carrot in front of the horse enouraging the student to seek out that extra bit of knowledge and then to incorporate into his/her thought process. My favorite teachers and professors have been those could inspire me to seek, absorb, and then adopt new sources of knowledge.

I ‘m looking forward to incorporating the guidelines for development of child-related media into group project discussions. Although I agree a piece of software should inspire and engage children, I find the idea of designing software which plays to children’s wants instead of their needs somewhat risky. Creating a online game which enthralls a child to negative extremes seems to limit the amount of time he/she can spend playing in the backyard making forts and mud pies. In our reading, there was no mention of games which institute limits to teach children that their desires cannot manifest themselves all the time. I also would like to find out about software and software research which encourages children to interact with the physical world in addition to the virtual one.

I was quite interested in the idea behind the U.B. Fun Keys which incorporates traditional plastic/vinyl toys, collecting, and online game playing. I was saddened to to see that your game play was limited by having only character key instead of enhanced by adding more character keys. The alien-like key and world designs might not have been the best choice, but I believe the concept could be quite successful with a different twist.