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Kids Learn Station Interactive learning tool for kids

S.M.C Rupasinghe, T.S Rupasinghe, T.D.C.LJayasuriya, D.M.A Reyhart, M.M.P.N. Walgampaya and N. Ranpatabandi
Abstract In the modern world, due to long working hours and employment responsibilities the quality time spent by parents with their children have drastically decreased. Without supervised guidance and support children could spend their afternoons playing video games, watching TV and getting into mischief until their parents arrive. Hence a solution that helps children spend time more effectively and productively while learning essential skills and academic work would be seen as an investment by parents for the future of their children. The computerized learning tool was designed and developed to address this while making the experience an enjoyable one for the young users. This tool is targeted for school children between the ages six and eight. The system provides interactive audio and video guidance that would be used by a child to navigate the program without the guidance of an adult. The learning tool gradually guides a child in improving primary English language skills, Arithmetic skills and object identification skills. Learned kit is equipped with play cards with English alphabet letters, numbers and pictures. The application identifies the images on the cards through the use of image processing techniques. This interactive nature makes the application an attractive play tool for the child who enables seamless learning while having an entertaining time all the while helping the child acquire the necessary skills and familiarity to work on computers and operating systems. Index Terms character recognition, contour analyzing, learning tool, template matching.

1 INTRODUCTION

2.1 Overall System A feasibility study was initially carried out to assess the S.M.C.Rupasinghe, T.S.Rupasinghe, T.D.C.L.Jayasuriya and viability of the project from a financial, technical and ecoD.M.A.Reyhart are currently pursuing Bsc degree program in Informanomical perspective. The results of the study were ention Technology in Sri Lanka Institute of Information Technology, Sri Lanka couraging and hence it was decided to go ahead with the M.M.P.N.Walgampaya is the supervisor for the research in Sri Lanka development of the concept application. Many paths were Institute of Information Technology, Sri Lanka. N Ranpatabandi is the co supervisor for the research in Sri Lanka Insti- explored during the carving of the initial project scope.

XPERIMENTS demonstrate that early learning experiences of children could have profound effects in their future learning and development [1]. Since the introduction of the computer into the field of education, it has evolved in to a tutor and a surrogate teacher. The development of games and simulations has helped make the learning process an intuitive and an interesting activity for all walks of life. The uses of the computers and related technologies have expanded during the past decades to being transformational tools and integral parts of the learning environments.[2] There are different approaches which could offer the young children an opportunity to engage in various activities related to math, arts, music, language, and many other skills. Computer has the capability of being incredible learning tools for children specially preschoolers as it does not get frustrated, bored, or angry, with repetitious tasks unlike adult supervisors. [3] There are many programs and websites that provide educational materials to children [4]. Most of these require an Internet connection. Most parents are reluctant to provide unsupervised Internet access to their children due to safety and privacy issues. Studies show that pri-

mary school children do not appear to be well equipped to deal with various dangers that their Internet activities could have on them [5]. Children more often engage in computer games rather than using computers for educational purposes. Hence educational software that could bridge the school home gap by providing learning while engaging the children in entertaining activities are required. Teachers find it easier to teach a child who possesses a strong preschool education background in language skills [6]. The KLS (Kid's Learn Station) is developed as a solution to address the above concerns and provide young school children with a platform that could be utilized to learn while being entertained without much supervision from an adult. The system is mainly focused on educating children in an interactive way. KLS feature an easy way of learning basic reading, identification and arithmetic capabilities in a view to improve the performance of child activities via intriguing ways.

2 METHODOLOGY

tute of Information Technology, Sri Lanka.

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Meetings were conducted with relevant authorities, questionnaires were prepared and distributed, and the government curriculum was followed to get a deeper understanding of the requirements of the targeted academic syllabuses. KLS is designed as a standalone application which embodies two main modules and six sub modules. Overall system diagram is shown in Fig 1. The sub modules provide the following functionalities: 1. Learning English alphabet; 2. Learning words; 3. Learning Numbers; 4. Picture games; 5. Basic arithmetic (addition and subtraction); and 6. Learn tour (integrated game based learning module)

The operation of each of the sub modules are described below.

2.2 Learning words, word games The letter cards are used to answer the picture challenges by creating the correct words and placing them one at a time in correct order on the display pad as illustrated in Fig 3. The system displays the images according to the grade of the current child who is using the application.

Fig. 3 Word game interface

2.3 Basic Mathematics Simple arithmetic challenges are answered by placing the answer using the numeric cards as shown in Fig 4. Complexity of the mathematical questions are depends on the childs grade.

Fig. 1 Overall system diagram The system uses printed cards as identification objects during the learning activities. A web cam is used as the input device when the child identifies an object from a given activity. The child will point the card at the camera and the system uses character and object recognition techniques to assess whether the child has found the correct object. Fig 2 illustrates the web cam used by KLS mounted on a display pad.

Fig. 4 Mathematic game interface

2.4 Picture Games The appropriate picture card needs to be placed on the display pad according to the given instructions. Child have to identify the right figure from his picture card corresponds to the question on the screen. This is illustrated in Fig 5.

Fig 2 .web cam mounted display pad

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Fig 5 Picture game

2.5 Learn tour This module uses all the previously learned skills and the cards within an animated video tour to answer the random challenges thrown at the child. This learns tour is represented as a single journey with many questions to answer to continue the journey. This was created as a 2D cartoon for child. 2.6 Implementation The application utilizes character recognition [7] and picture recognition technologies to assess the input of the children during the learning challenges. .Net C# and C++ with openCv [8] modified wrappers, OpenCvSharp [9] and emguCv were used for character recognition and template matching respectively. ExpressionBlend is used to create aesthetically pleasing user interfaces and smooth animations in interfaces. All the images and cartoon characters were built from scratch using Adobe Illustrator CS4. Adobe After effects CS4 was used for designing animations in the KLS educational application. Character Recognition - The objective of a character recognition system is to classify alphabetic letters, numbers or other characters without any human intervention which are stored in the form of digital images. This process deals with the recognition of characters acquired through optical means, typically from a camera. A contour based method is used as the main concept of character recognition. The contour of a pixel image contains the necessary information on the object shape. Hence by analyzing the contours, it is possible to identify the pattern of the object - transposition, turn and the scaling factor of an image object. [10] Contour analyzing methods are invariant to these transformations. When the contour is scanned, each vector offset is noted by a complex number and the contour is encoded by the sequence consisting of complex numbers. On a contour, the starting point is fixed. The characters are identified as a pixelated image. These images are then matched against the library of image objects to identify the exact character that was placed over the display pad. The steps involved in deriving the correct feature from a pattern go to a range of applications with a pre-defined procedure pattern detection and recognition. When deriving the correct pattern, first the character position on the pad is located and the necessary conversions are applied. Segmentation, feature extraction

and classification is then carried out to identify the character. The preprocessing stage aims to make the image more suitable for different feature extraction algorithms. Some feature extraction algorithms only deal with the contours of the image, while calculating every pixel of the image. On the other hand, the initial image may be affected by noise, or distorted due to other reasons. The preprocessing stage which includes thresholding, binarizing, filtering, edge detection, gap filling, and segmentation and other operations all help in making the extracted image more suitable for later computations. The classification step, which corresponds to the matching stage of the object recognition systems, assigns each loaded character image to one of the possible image models. The decision is made on the basis of similarity. Given a shape representation scheme, the degree of similarity of any two shapes can be calculated by using a similarity measuring metric. The main components of character recognition are illustrated in Fig 6.

Fig 6 Character Recognition methodology KLS provides image cards to be used for the Picture Games. Classification technique attempt to match an input image against a database of template images to find the images which are most similar.Various measures of similarity are possible. In all cases the matching is performed at the pixel level rather than being based on features extracted from the image. Thus, the template and input images must have the same dimensions to be comparable at all. Pre-processing is needed in order to ensure that the template and input images have the same dimensions

Conclusion

This system is mainly focused on educating children in an interactive way. KLS feature an easy way of learning basic reading, identification and arithmetic capabilities in a view to improving the performance of child activities via intriguing ways. The system could be easily extended to introduce letters of different languages.

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[1] Jeffrey T. Fouts, Research on Computers and Education: Past, Present and Future, Feb 2000 [2] Roschelle, J., Pea, R., Hoadley, C., Gordin, D., Means, B. (2001). Changing How and What Children Learn in School with ComputerBased Technologies. The Future of Children, 10(2). Los Altos, CA: Packard Foundation. 76-101. [3] Pearson Education. (2000-2009). Fun Brain, [Online]. Available: http://www.funbrain.com/ [Accessed: February 12, 2010]. [4] How Aware are primary school children to the dangers of the Internet? Derek O Reilly. Dundalk Institute of Technology, Ireland. IADIS International Journal on Computer Science and Information Systems, Vol. 3, No. 2, pp. 1-12. [5] Clements, Douglas H. "The effective use of computers with young children." Mathematics in the early years (1999): 119-128. [6] R. McClure, Will Preschool Education Make a Child ready for Kindergarten, (2010) About.com:Child Care, The New York Times Company.[Online]. Available :http: //childcare.about.com/cs/preschools/a/ readiness.htm [Accessed: February 9, 2010]. [7] S. Impedove, L. Ottaviano, and S. Occhinegro, Optical character recognition a survey, Internal Journal of Pattern Recognition and Artificial Intelligence, Vol. 5 (1-2), pp.1-24, 1991. [8]OpenCv, in Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia [Online], February 14, 2012. Available: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/opencv [Accessed: February 14, 2012] [9] OpencvSharp OpenCV wrapper for .NET Framework [Online], Available: http://code.google.com/p/opencvsharp/ [Accessed: May 17, 2012]. [10] M. K. Hu, Visual pattern recognition by moment inariants, IRE Trans. Inform. Theory, Vol.IT-8, pp.179-187, February 1962.