Research – Amanda Tamsett

Hey everyone

For my project I have been looking at the use of interactive games and how they can be used as an educational tool for young children. I found that there are many simple interactive games on the Internet for children to use but thought of an idea of creating one for use within a school. The game would be subject based, for example for my piece I will be basing it around the subject mathematics. For my research I have been looking at different interactive games which are already available. One of the styles of games that I have been looking at was the Brain Training games available for the Nintendo DS. i have been looking at the Brain Age website 

These games are highly successful and demonstrate good use of interactivity. Realistically I would not be able to produce a game of this quality due to constraints.

However, I can take ideas and methods from these games to use in my design and create a simpler but effective game. A feature similar to the Brain Age game i was looking at was the possibility of the use of touch screen technology to make the game more interactive and exciting for the children. This is an idea that can be incorporated into the game if used within a school. However, if used elsewhere then the touch screen technology may become more of an issue.

 

Other research I have been looking at is other interactive games available to play on the Internet. An interesting site is Insight Interactive Games. this site has some simple and some more complex interactive games available on the web. I can use ideas from this also mainly from the word games that I could possibly incorporate into my design.

 

My next step is to continue researching interactive games and look at the features which are most successful amongst children of the right target age, which is likely to be between 6 and 10 years. I would like to create a game which will encourage children to learn about mathematics in a fun and interesting way.