Team members: Guðný and Valdís
Project name: Math Mania
Project tag line: Math tutor for 1st graders
The object of this program is to teach numbers, addition and multiplication. The tutoring program will be in the form of interactive games, combined with graded quizzes. For each level there is a specific task to be learned. For the first level the task is to learn the numbers, for the second level the goal is to learn addition etc. A student can then at any time take a quiz in one of the levels, answer a series of question and get a grade on his performance.
For each level there will be a different game. For the first level the student will control a character running in a 3D environment. The student can click on a number of items and the system gives information on the count of the clicked item (e.g. students clicks on 2 birds and gets the number 2 on the screen) with the goal being to collect as many items as in a given timeframe. In this way the child is immersed in playing a game and is learning something while doing that. The quiz mode is then a set of questions regarding the taught subject for that level and as the student continues on answering the questions he will get a feedback in the form of facial expressions etc. from the tutor character. At the end of the quiz he will then get a grade.
As our independent study projects we will consentrate on a pedagogical agent, Valdís will be consentrating on developing a curriculum that makes good use of VE and Guðný will be consentrating on procedurally generated facial expressions. Since the project is split into two parts, teaching and quizzing, our emphasis will partly lie in different parts of the system. The curriculum will be used in the game and the facial expressions to indicate the quiz results by facial expression.
The main emphasis in our project will be the first level of the game, teaching numbers and a quiz concerning that. The basic version will contain blended animations for facial expressions.