Hi All, Sometime ago we had the idea to try and create skill trainers using interactive roleplay on the XO - recently discovered Renpy as a really excellent tool for doing this. One can make an engaging audio, video and dialogue experience very quickly using Renpy's scripting language, and where that's not enough, you can just add python code. There are a fair few gotcha's to it but I have documented most of this on the wiki:
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Renpy The thing about roleplay which is beautiful is it gives a risk free way to experiment and learn about key skills in a way that can really relate back to real life. It's not just an experience of individuals either; I remember having fun playing Monkey Island and other such games We are thinking to make: 1. Children's health guides to day to day issues in life (brushing teeth, toilet hygiene, etc) 2. Soft skill trainers - could help others in the house (parents / elder siblings as well) - job interview trainer, etc whilst not loosing focus from the younger children. 3. Household Hygiene / Health advisor - a virtual doctor guided tour through the house to address hygiene problems. Rote learning unfortunately largely destroys people's capacity to act on information consumed - people are used to either consumption (memorization) or interacting with people. We will be doing an experiment to compare the impact of using an interactive virtual advisor on the XO to radio, television, paper, and a real person. 4. Maybe some kind of pedagogic game - teachers need to have confidence to try and change how things are working. Perhaps if they could experiment with different methods in a virtual classroom environment this would help? Other ideas would indeed be welcome :) Regards, -Mike (OLPC Afghanistan) _______________________________________________ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel