Platform to choose for educational software - Graphics

Nikhil wrote:
>
> Hi,
> I am part of a school

What does that mean exactly? You're a teacher? Principal?
Student?

> and am planning to start making some educational
> software for kids.

What's going to make your product different / unique than what
is already on the market? What age/ability group is this
software going to be directed at? K-12?

> I wanted some suggestions as to which language
> should I choose.
> Here are my requirements:
> 1. Character animation controlled by a program.
> 2. Audio integrated for the character animation.
> 3. Video clip support.
> 4. Last, but not the least, reusable object oriented code, capable of
> interacting with PostgreSQL or MySQL.
>
> I have seen what current open source educational software offers, and
> it doesnt exactly cater to our syllabus. Thats why I want to develop
> some.

So you're going to create this software and give it away for
free as an open source offering? I haven't seen many
teachers/schools that actually make use of the random open
source packages that are available for download off the web.

Martin

> I have done some preliminary study and here is what I found out:
>
> Java/C++:
> Excellent support for program controlled animation. Free. But -
> cumbersome for programming. Development time is high, and skilled
> programmers are rare.

AFAIK, there are lots of "skilled" programmers out there.

> Has audio and video support.
>
> Flash:
> The best choice for program controlled animation. The downside is its
> expensive. Programmers and artists available in abundance.
> Has audio and video support.
>
> SVG:
> Picking up speed. Program controlled animation possible. Again,
> cumbersome and
> skilled programmers are rare. No audio and video support.
>
> .NET:
> Expensive. Programmers comfortable with GDI are rare. Stuck to an OS
> (Mono hasnt taken off yet)
>
> All in all, I feel that as of now, Flash is the only way to go.
> Expensive as it may be, the time saved will definitely make up for the
> cost.
>
> Any suggestions will be of great help!
>
> Thanks,
> Nikhil.

Im a co-ordinator in the school.
I am planning to make software for K-12 kids. The difference in the
software I am going to make is that my software will teach the kid what
is wrong and why it is wrong rather than telling him/her that "this is
the correct answer - the answer you chose was wrong". I dont think
there is software which does that (at least from what I have seen).
Open source - thats for later. I have seen umpteen open source stuff
for kids - but none actually caught my attention. I am trying out
FreeDuc and trying to find something which is good in it.
So the question remains - what platform can I choose? Skilled
programmers dont exist in this part of the world (Pune, India) as they
are being whisked away by the biggies paying huge salaries! ;-)

Comments inline.

Martin

Nikhil wrote:
>
> Im a co-ordinator in the school.

Ah, my guess is you're what we call a facilitator here. Someone
who helps coordinate and create curriculum for use in
classrooms.

> I am planning to make software for K-12 kids.

That's a pretty broad spectrum of material if you asked me. The
biggest problem that I've seen with such educational software,
is that the people authoring it are not hat well versed in a)
the subject/topic being presented and b) the audience it's aimed
at. One-size-fits-all doesn't really work IMO. Leastwise here in
the US, I don't really know how it is there in India. From what
I've read, educational systems are run differently in all parts
of the world.

> The difference in the
> software I am going to make is that my software will teach the kid what
> is wrong and why it is wrong rather than telling him/her that "this is
> the correct answer - the answer you chose was wrong".

It's been my observation that the "this is the correct answer"
method of pedagogy is used simply as a way of speeding up the
educational process. Teachers here (US) are expected to cover a
lot of material in a fix amount of time and that seems to have
lead to making the "this is the correct answer" method the most
used. Learning "why" something is wrong rather than right is
probably going to take more time.

> I dont think
> there is software which does that (at least from what I have seen).

My guess is you're correct - that there is little of this sort
of software around. Which means that you might have something
unique to offer.

> Open source - thats for later. I have seen umpteen open source stuff
> for kids - but none actually caught my attention. I am trying out
> FreeDuc and trying to find something which is good in it.

This is the first time that I've heard of FreeDuc -
http://www.ofset.org/

Looks kind of interesting. Not sure how "useful" it would be
here in the US - least at this time, later might be another
matter - here we're pretty much entrenched in using the
prepackaged stuff.

> So the question remains - what platform can I choose? Skilled
> programmers dont exist in this part of the world (Pune, India) as they
> are being whisked away by the biggies paying huge salaries! ;-)

That's the big problem as I see it. Educators tend not to have
the programming / software authoring skills needed to create a
useful full featured package, and the software people don't have
the classroom experience or pedagogical knowledge needed to
create something that is actually useful in the classroom. And
most software companies don't consider educational software as
something that is very profitable. The only company (US) that I
can think of that was very successful at this was Davidson
Associates - the creators of the "Math Blaster" and such
software.

Well, good luck in your endeavors.

Martin

> The only company (US) that I
> can think of that was very successful at this was Davidson
> Associates - the creators of the "Math Blaster" and such
> software.

You are of course overlooking the various curriculum providers used by
the homeschool movement in the US. Companies offering products such as
Switched On Schoolhouse, Alpha-Omega, etc.

This has been a topic I've been wrestling with for 4 years now. My goal
was to produce a curriculum authoring platform that was easy enough to
use for non-technical persons to enable them to produce curriculum in
areas where they would be Subject Matter Experts and provide for
content delivery methods that were adjustable to various learning
styles and teaching methodologies.

I haven't made much progress beyond a thorough definition of the
concept and a high-level blueprint of the application.

The end-objective was to enable parent-educators with great skills in
subjects as diverse as criminology, metal-working and auto-mechanics to
produce curriculum that could be shared with the home-school community
as a huge free library of courseware.

It's a much bigger undertaking than most would realize.

Tillman

tillius wrote:
>
> > The only company (US) that I
> > can think of that was very successful at this was Davidson
> > Associates - the creators of the "Math Blaster" and such
> > software.
>
> You are of course overlooking the various curriculum providers used by
> the homeschool movement in the US. Companies offering products such as
> Switched On Schoolhouse, Alpha-Omega, etc.

My only experiences is with the regular public school system -
I've got no knowledge of what is being utilized for the home
school market.

> This has been a topic I've been wrestling with for 4 years now. My goal
> was to produce a curriculum authoring platform that was easy enough to
> use for non-technical persons to enable them to produce curriculum in
> areas where they would be Subject Matter Experts and provide for
> content delivery methods that were adjustable to various learning
> styles and teaching methodologies.

I have to imagine that there are some packages out there were a
educator can "build" something custom. I've played with a
package awhile back (few years ago) called Multimedia Fusion -
www.clickteam.com/English/multimedia_fusion.htm
It allows you to create custom interactive applications and I
remember one of the examples / demos was a quiz type program.
Clickteam has a number of other packages that might do something
like that too. Not too sure if it's around, but Macromedia
Director was similar to this MMF, but lots more powerful.
Barring that, I imagine that it wouldn't be that difficult to
build something web based, depending on the subject matter and
how deep you plan on covering it and how interactive it has to
be.

Personally, I prefer old technology when it comes to learning -
book based rather than computer-based. But then my school
experiences predate the PC and the internet.

> I haven't made much progress beyond a thorough definition of the
> concept and a high-level blueprint of the application.

IMO, that's the hard part.

> The end-objective was to enable parent-educators with great skills in
> subjects as diverse as criminology, metal-working and auto-mechanics to
> produce curriculum that could be shared with the home-school community
> as a huge free library of courseware.

"... criminology, metal-working and auto-mechanics ...", many of
the companies that author textbooks for industrial technology
courses are now including multimedia companion curriculum.

And there are some companies that offer curriculum that is
almost entirely multimedia based, such as CEV
http://www.cevmultimedia.com/index.p...al%20Education

I've seen some of their offerings for public schools and they've
seemed pretty comprehensive - but it is pretty pricey stuff,
probably way too pricey for the home school crowd.

Martin

>
> It's a much bigger undertaking than most would realize.
>
> Tillman

Hello Nikhil,
instead of making an in-depth interrogatory
I would warmly recommend to use Borland Delphi as your
main development tool for creating Educational Software.

Delphi gives you many advantages over any other PC programming language.
Dont worry for speed. Delphi offers you same speed as C++ or Java or
any other "super-language".

Delphi programming is easy intelligible, and it let you concentrate
not in the programming tool itself, but in solving the problem (as opposed
to C or java).

For Delphi, there is a huge amount of free components that add
excellent capabilities to your program. There are many web sites
where you can find free components for Delphi:
Torry's page, Delphi Super page, Delphi32, among others.

With Delphi, you have full control on everything, from database management,
internet intranet interaction, through multimedia and PC resources.
With Delphi, you can make better use of your PC resources by adding DirectX
and OpenGL graphic and multimedia capabilities. Since Delphi version 8
it includes the .NET extensions and it has the full characteristics for
creating
from simply applications to highly sophisticated software packages.

Of course, an educational software project can be envisioned in many
ways, but I guess you will include multimedia (sound, pictures, video
clips) that you create with other software tools. Anyway, Delphi lets
you manage everything, you can integrate WAV, MP3, AVI, MOV,
PDF, FLASH, in a single educative multimedia program. I guess
you will need to Macromedia software to create basic flash interactive
animations.and possibly 3D Studio Max for creating 3D illustrative
models and animations. Later, you can manage 3D models created with
3D Studio Max or any other program in your Delphi program, and
add physics based modelling capabilities (ODE, PDE) to add realism
to your simulations of natural phenomena for educational purposes.

You can find source code at open source internet projects like The Delphi
Game
Developers Network, the JEDI project and the Source Forge project webpages.
If decide to make your project an open source project, get enthusiastic
help and
collaboration from many other users developers from the world at
Sourceforge.net,
the biggest collaborative software network.

Good luck!

Ronald

"Nikhil" <nkarkare@gmail.com> a écrit dans le message de news:
1135750810.570031.76660@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com...
> Hi,
> I am part of a school and am planning to start making some educational
> software for kids. I wanted some suggestions as to which language
> should I choose.
> Here are my requirements:
> 1. Character animation controlled by a program.
> 2. Audio integrated for the character animation.
> 3. Video clip support.
> 4. Last, but not the least, reusable object oriented code, capable of
> interacting with PostgreSQL or MySQL.
>
> I have seen what current open source educational software offers, and
> it doesnt exactly cater to our syllabus. Thats why I want to develop
> some.
>
> I have done some preliminary study and here is what I found out:
>
> Java/C++:
> Excellent support for program controlled animation. Free. But -
> cumbersome for programming. Development time is high, and skilled
> programmers are rare.
> Has audio and video support.
>
> Flash:
> The best choice for program controlled animation. The downside is its
> expensive. Programmers and artists available in abundance.
> Has audio and video support.
>
> SVG:
> Picking up speed. Program controlled animation possible. Again,
> cumbersome and
> skilled programmers are rare. No audio and video support.
>
> .NET:
> Expensive. Programmers comfortable with GDI are rare. Stuck to an OS
> (Mono hasnt taken off yet)
>
> All in all, I feel that as of now, Flash is the only way to go.
> Expensive as it may be, the time saved will definitely make up for the
> cost.
>
> Any suggestions will be of great help!
>
> Thanks,
> Nikhil.
>