Making good adult / children / educational games (?) - [Charity]

[sketchess]

Greetings everyone.

A little about me.
Since 2008 I invest free time and money in (mostly private) social projects. The very one on which my heart lies on, is a non-profit future help center. One of the major parts is dedicated to people who are handicapted in their linguistic development. I count myself to this group and couldn't be more serious about all the further effort I'm willing to spend to make things for others easier. The first attempt founds in a online database.

My thougts are not spining around the question, if AGS is made for other material like stuff. No. More like, what are parents happy with, to give it in the hands of their kids? What is considered children save? What is a child happy with to use? Elementary questions about design, user-friendliness, no-goes and so on.

I'm interested in your general opinions as parents and ex-children. Both worlds are welcome, handicap or not.
Thanks a lot for every reply.

[Mandle]

I am in great admiration of the work you are undertaking but I must admit that I had to read your post several times to actually understand what you were asking people to answer to...

I hope you do not mind if I reword it slightly so that maybe others can answer fully what you are asking:

EDITED VERSION OF POST:

Greetings everyone.

A little about myself:

Ever since 2008 I have invested my free time and money in (mostly private) social projects. The one I'm the most emotionally invested in right now is a non-profit help center aimed at bettering society's future. It's mostly dedicated to people who are handicapped in their linguistic development. I count myself under this heading and couldn't be more serious about striving to make things easier for others who are experiencing the same problems as I did myself. This first attempt is an online database.

I'm not concerned really with what AGS what designed to do, but mainly wanted to ask the community here questions like: What tools are parents comfortable with to give into the hands of their kids? What is considered child-safe? What will a child happily use? Elementary questions about design, user-friendliness, no-goes and so on.

I'm interested in your general opinions as parents and ex-children. I'm talking about all children, handicapped or not.

Thanks a lot for every reply.

I hope no offense is taken at me rewording the initial post, but I believe this is in the spirit of what you were asking...

As a teacher of children myself I hope you can get some constructive feedback from the community here on interface design/game content for children...

[sketchess]

Hello Mandle, nice to see you.
Well I had a feeling that it would happen. Having a little trouble to express it to others.
Probably just spent to much time with this stuff. Thanks a lot.

[straydogstrut]

Interesting post!

I volunteer with young people with autism and, while our projects don't involve computers/technology as such (they are more activity-based, focussing on social development), one of my never-get-around-to projects is to look into app development for SEN. Either way, i'm always interested in hearing how people approach design for children/education.

Pinterest is good for finding examples and a lot of teachers use it to share materials. Some of these will be digital apps. I use it to pin examples of drag and drop coding/design aimed at children.

I don't have kids to give a parents' perspective, but one of the young people I support uses an iPad app at home that lets him watch YouTube videos without supervision and empowers him to choose - from a pre defined playlist his parents have created - what he wants to watch. I think it's iTubeList (http://ipadkids.com/itubelist-review-take-control-of-youtube/), although the review there isn't particularly favourable.

On our last project we also used a music app that let the young people play instruments like flutes and drums by touching the iPad screen. There are lots of these apps around and they are not necessarily aimed at children, but it was so tactile and intuitive that the technology didn't get in the way of the fun we were trying to achieve in the workshop.

I think any software targeted at kids needs to strike the balance between providing a safe environment for the child to play/learn, while not dumbing down the experience. An intuitive user interface, parental controls and age-appropriate content, and privacy settings for any social media interaction would be my considerations.

[Mandle]

Hello Mandle, nice to see you.
Well I had a feeling that it would happen. Having a little trouble to express it to others.
Probably just spent to much time with this stuff. Thanks a lot.

No worries mate. And thank you for not taking offense. I wouldn't usually do something like that but your post struck me as being a very important topic that could really benefit from the insights of the community here.

Cheers!

[sketchess]

Good Morning everyone.
I guess, SEN stands in this case for - children with special educational needs. It would have been great, if educators had paied attention on subjects like this 30 years ago. Personally, I have experienced that most teachers lack of the ability to get down to the root of problems. And in todays environment the lack of time remains a major problem, too. Or money, or location, even language regions themselves. In general. But neverthless there are these special people of nowadays, I enjoy to work with to achieve my goal. Most of them were teachers some sort of, mostly based on philology.

The work of a few pioneers in the west and east around the globe has influenced me a lot. It grew the wish on me, to contribute, even bigger.

Like you, @straydogstrut, I keep an eye on the accomplishments of the human kind. But with most products I'm not very happy with. Often it feels like something is missing or things have been made unnecessarily intricate. Or other reasons I find stuff inappropriate.

@Mandle what kind of teacher are you? What are your subjects?


wish ya a nice day