An Interactive Educational Environment

for Preschool Children

Ahmad Zmily, Christina B. Class, Yaser Mowaﬁ and Dirar Abu-Saymeh

School of Information Technology and Engineering,

German Jordanian University, Amman, Jordan

Abstract. Early years in children education are vital in terms of their social,

physical, intellectual, creative, and emotional progress. Those years lay the foun-

dation for later school success and development. In recent years, the pervasive-

ness of mobile devices and smart phones has broadened the provision of learn-

ing content. The development of WLAN and NFC technologies in mobile de-

vices over the last years empowered interactive learning that can provide learning

content associated with learning contexts, and subsequently provide personalized

learning support for each learner. In this paper, we propose a novel approach for

an interactive learning environment for preschool education. The interactive envi-

ronment utilizes smart handheld devices equipped with NFC and wireless sensor

networks to enhance the educational environments. Our proposal focuses on cre-

ating a fun, educational, interactive environment that allows kids to learn while

they play. We created a pedagogical concept for basic skills related to the num-

ber core as an important mathematical concept for children. To demonstrate the

proposed approach, we developed an application that implemented parts of this

concept for the Android OS.

1 Introduction

First few years in children’s life are crucial in terms of their social, physical, intellec-

tual, creative, and emotional development. During those years, the growth of mental

and physical abilities progress at an astonishing rate. As a matter of fact, a very high

proportion of learning for humans takes place during the early years. The learning ca-

pabilities of humans continue for the rest of their lives but not at the intensity that is

demonstrated in the preschool years. Those preschool years in particular are the time

when children need high quality personal care and learning experiences.

Early childhood education refers to the formal teaching of young children before the

age of normal schooling by people outside the family and typically in settings outside

the home. The early learning experiences help children’s intellectual, social and emo-

tional development which lays the foundation for later school success. Studies have

shown that high quality or high rated preschools have a long term effect in improving

the outcomes of children [1].

A HighScope research study examined 123 children from Ypsilanti, Michigan born

in poverty and at high risk of failing in school [2]. In that study, 3 and 4-year old chil-

dren were randomly divided into a program group that received a high-quality preschool

Zmily A., B. Class C., Mowaﬁ Y. and Abu-Saymeh D..

An Interactive Educational Environment for Preschool Children.

DOI: 10.5220/0004603400740082

In Proceedings of the 2nd International Workshop on Interaction Design in Educational Environments (IDEE-2013), pages 74-82

ISBN: 978-989-8565-65-5

 2013 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)

program and a comparison group who received no preschool program. The study found

that adults at age 40 who had the preschool program had higher earnings, were more

likely to hold a job, had committed fewer crimes, and were more likely to have gradu-

ated from high school than adults who did not receive a preschool program.

Preschool participation in the U.S. has been increasing steadily. ”In 1960, just 10%

of the U.S. 3- and 4-year olds were enrolled in any type of classroom” [3]. Figures from

2008 show that nearly three quarters of children enroll in a preschool classroom at age

4 and about half do so at age 3 [3]. These trends have been accompanied by growth

in private preschool education and child care, state-funded pre-K, preschool special

education, and federal Head Start programs [4].

Early childhood education is unique as children learn more efﬁciently and gain more

knowledge through play-based activities. Wenner in [5] discussed the role of free, imag-

inative play in young children’s healthy development. In her article, she concluded that:

young children’s play is essential for healthy social, emotional and cognitive growth;

imaginative, child-directed play is more helpful than structured play; and young chil-

dren who do not engage in free play are at-risk of developing into anxious, socially

maladjusted adults.

The pervasiveness of mobile devices and smart phones has broadened the provision

of learning content from e-learning to mobile learning (m-learning). With the empha-

sis of providing learning content at the right time and the right place, the advantage of

m-learning is to provide learners with learning content beyond the physical classroom

setting. Meanwhile, the continual development and proliferation of WLAN and RFID

sensing technologies in mobile devices over the last years have enabled the develop-

ment of context-aware ubiquitous learning that can provide learning content associated

with learning contexts, and subsequently provide personalized learning support for each

learner [6].

Recently, mobile and ubiquitous learning has become a popular trend in education.

Ubiquitous learning environments can enhance students learning experience. For ex-

ample, integrating the learning environment with real-time interaction and navigation

support of the learning content enhances students’ understanding of the learning con-

tent. Moreover, ubiquitous learning provides learners with an alternative approach of

scaffolding information in a real-world context, which enables learners to interact more

actively and thus promotes their learning process. Most mobile and ubiquitous learning

applications merely focused on education for children older than 6 years, high school,

and collage students.

In this paper, we propose an interactive learning environment for preschool educa-

tion. The interactive environment utilizes smart handheld devices equipped with Near

Field Communication (NFC) and wireless sensor networks to enhance the educational

environments in kindergarten. Our proposal focuses on creating a fun, educational, in-

teractive environment that allows kids to learn while they play. The interactive environ-

ment helps improving childrens ability to play, share, and collaborate with other chil-

dren. In addition, the environment improves children’s physical motor skills and their

understanding of the real physical world. Our interactive environment is a complement

for preschool teachers and educators. As a matter of fact, the presence of preschool

teachers and educators is important to help children fully utilize the learning environ-

ment, resolve any possible conﬂict between children, and prevent any frustration in case

a child fails to interact successfully with the learning environment.

To evaluate our proposed interactive learning environment, we created a pedagog-

ical concept for basic skills related to the number core as an important mathematical

concept for children. We developed an application that implemented parts of this con-

cept for the Android OS. The application prompts a child to search for a given number

of objects and count them. The child has to move around and collect the required num-

ber of objects from his surrounding environment. In addition, children can interactively

count collected objects while the application provides feedback about the number of

counted objects.

The remainder of this paper is structured as follows. In Section 2, we describe in

details the pedagogical and didactical model of our interactive learning environment for

preschoolchildren. Section 3 presents the different experimental tasks developed for the

proposed environment and shows the methodology used along with the initial results.

In Section 4, we discuss related work and describe how the proposed work differs from

previous related studies. We conclude with ﬁnal comments and potential future work in

Section 5.

2 Pedagogical and Didactical Model

In this paper we describe a concept and a prototype for an interactive learning envi-

ronment for preschool children. Using mobile technology and NFC tags, we aim at

creating a playful environment that supports: children’s learning; their experiences in

the real world; and their natural desire to moveand play. To achievethis goal, it is essen-

tial to design the application and the environment based on a well-founded and sound

concept. In this section we present main aspects of the concept and the environment.

Swiss scholar Jean Piaget suggested that children go through distinct stages of cog-

nitive development. Each stage of development gives the child a new set of mental tools

to process information. The task of the teacher is to match appropriate content to the de-

velopment stage of the child. Piaget’s work lacks several important dimensions: it treats

the stages as relatively discrete rather than overlapping and varying among individuals,

and it does not take into account the learners’ social relationships to the wider world

[7].

Our proposed concept is based on developmental aspects of human learning. Ap-

propriate pedagogy has to take into account children’s development stage. Age gives an

indication for the current stage but not necessarily for all children. J. E. Ormrod in [8]

discussed this limitation for the development stages of Piaget. We consider that similar

limitations hold for all development stages that might be deﬁned. We integrate implica-

tions of Piagetian and Neo-Piagetian theories as mentioned in [8]. We speciﬁcally focus

on the following implications from [8]:

– children can learn a lot based on personal experiences,

– interaction with other children can foster learning and understanding while not

eliminating the risk of conﬁrmation bias,

– children need to master basic concepts in one domain before they can learn more

advanced concepts in the same domain.

Therefore, our application allows the child to make different experiences in his own en-

vironment. As he shares the environment with his peers, interaction is facilitated within

the same age group or may be triggered by curiosity among different age groups.To help

children master those concepts, feedback and support are provided instantaneously.

J. S. Lee in [9] presented common beliefs of preschool teachers for appropriate

pedagogy for 4-year-old children. We developed our concept based on the following

characteristics of adequate pedagogy listed in [9]:

– working with the environment should be fun,

– choices are important,

– the environment is linked to interests and everyday lifes experiences,

– learning avoids pressure and stress when is based on play, exploration and discov-

ery.

As interaction is critical when inquiry-based methods are applied [10] and human in-

teraction is important for the social construction of meaning and scaffolding[8], our

concept offers a range of possibilities that are complemented by interaction with edu-

cators and peers.

Information and Communication Technologies have been used for some time in ed-

ucation. Many educational as well as edutainment applications have been developed

for different age groups including children in preschool education. Aronin and Floyd

[11] discussed several apps for iPad in preschool environment to convey basic STEM

(science, technology, engineering, and math) concepts. Wang et al. [10] suggested that

inquiry based learning in early childhood education should incorporate technology and

presented some sample applications for different purposes in children’s inquiry learn-

ing. Clements and Sarama [12] discussed the results of applying basic teaching mate-

rial based on computed and paper activities to learn concepts related to numerals and

shapes. Their study has shown that even a small number of experiments were sufﬁcient

to produce large relative learning gains.

As sound understanding of basic mathematical concepts like numbers, measure-

ments, and geometry is important for success in school and further education, the learn-

ing paths should be carefully designed. Hence, we have based our presented concept on

the learning paths of numbers, relations, and operations presented in [13]. We focus on

the number core that includes:

– knowing the number word list (1,2,3,...),

– understanding cardinality,

– understanding and applying 1-to-1 counting correspondence,

– reading and writing number symbols, as well as

– applying the cardinal counting principle.

The Committee on Early Childhood Mathematics presented the development of the

number core for the following four steps: ages 2 and 3; age 4 / prekindergarten; age 5 /

kindergarten; and grade 1 [13]. They also deﬁned relevant competences for each step.

In order to evaluate the concept of the interactive learning environmentfor preschool

children, we have developed in more details a concept for 1-to-1 counting correspon-

dence application in the number core as deﬁned in [13]. The developed application

prompts children to count objects and provides instant feedback on the counted num-

ber of objects. Contrary to the aforementioned applications, the objects to be counted

are real world objects from the physical environment. Our interactive educational envi-

ronment brings real world objects (plastic fruits, vegetables, animals, balls, toy blocks,

etc) to the application and seamlessly integrates both. Those objects can be used for

undirected playing activities as well as for instructional games to foster counting skills.

Instead of counting objects that are displayed on a screen, the child can use the appli-

cation to count any of the objects he is interacting with. Equally the application may

prompt the child to search for a given number of objects and count them. Thus it invites

the child to move around and collect those objects from his surrounding environment.

Conﬂicts that may rise during such tasks can be handled by the educator to help children

develop skills to take into account another point of view, i.e. to overcome the egocen-

trism as deﬁned by Piaget [8], and to develop conﬂict resolution strategies. While the

application cannot be used to develop those skills, it can trigger learning situation. Ad-

ditionally, we developed collaborative tasks that are coordinated on different devices

(e.g. one child must ﬁnd 3 animal toys and the other one 3 vegetable toys and only after

both have found their respective number of toys, the task is considered to be fulﬁlled).

Our developed application helps children in learning how to count objects using a

1-to-1 counting correspondence. As young children are interested in counting many ob-

jects, our application allows the child to start the counting process whenever he likes.

Since every tagged object is counted, the application keeps track of the already counted

objects so that the same object cannot be counted twice. The child has the option to

restrict counting to objects with speciﬁc characteristics, like animals, fruit, red objects,

etc. Additionally, the child can choose to ﬁnd and count objects. In that case, the appli-

cation, prompts the child to ﬁnd a speciﬁed number of objects with speciﬁc character-

istics and count them. The number of objects to be found as well as the complexity of

the characteristics are adjusted according to the child learning progress. Moreover, the

child can request a collaborative task. Here, another child is invited and, if he accepts

the invitation, together they have to perform a task. They might be required to each col-

lect a speciﬁed number of objects with speciﬁc characteristics or they might be required

to use their devices to count alternately.

3 Experimental Tasks and Implementation

In this section, we present the experimental tasks based on the concept discuss in section

2 and the implementation details.

3.1 Experimental Tasks

The goal of interactive learning is to provide a learning environment that allows chil-

dren to learn while they move and explore their surrounding environment. The learning

process is based on children exploration of their surroundings environment to observe

and probe a set of learning objects [14]. As shown in Figure 1, the intended learning

environment in our study is comprised of learning objects labeled with NFC tags. Each

Child

NFC Handheld

Reader

Learning

Objects

Fig.1. Interactive learning architecture.

object in the environment has a unique NFC tag that stores information about the ob-

ject. Children use handheld devices that are equipped with an NFC reader to explore

the objects. As soon as the child brings the handheld device in the close proximity of

an NFC tag, the handheld device will produce audio-based information relevant to the

learning object and task.

The target learners of our study are preschooler children whose ages are between

three and ﬁve years. Children at this age are conceivably presumed to be able to identify

colors, shapes, letters and numbers and set to be in the process of developing numerals

and literacy skills, and also have started to show interest in counting [8]. For the sake of

our study, children will be requested to perform learning tasks which entail navigating

and exploring certain learning objects (i.e., colors, shapes, animals, fruits and vegeta-

bles). When children approach the target learning object of their interest, they will be

required to bring their handheld devices close to that object. Consequently, the NFC tag

reader will produce on the child’s handheld device vocal information associated with

the tagged learning object. Depending on whether the children identiﬁcation of the se-

lected learning object was successful or not; vocal information will provide the children

with a feedback of their progress in fulﬁlling the assigned learning task, or with further

guidance towards fulﬁlling that task. Examples of the learning tasks and their scenarios

are provided as follows:

The child is ﬁrst asked to ﬁnd and count certain color objects (e.g. red, blue, yel-

low etc). The handheld device produces vocal feedback information of the children

progress in fulﬁlling the assigned learning task. Once the child manages to identify and

count those learning objects, the handheld device will produce a vocal feedback of suc-

cessfully identiﬁed color objects. Consequently, the task complexity level is adjusted

for the child to identify certain objects (e.g., apples, bananas, balls, etc). Conversely,

if the child fails to identify all the color objects, the task complexity level remains un-

changed. As shown in Figure 2, upon successful fulﬁllment of the previous level the

learning task complexity level will be adjusted to include the identiﬁcation of certain

objects and colors (e.g., red apples, yellow bananas, etc).

Each time a child manages to successfully identify an object, the handheld device

Successfully

Completed

Learning task

Identify color

Yes

Learning task

Identify type

Successfully

Completed

Learning task

Identify color and type

Yes

Level of

Complexity

Level of

Complexity

Level of

Complexity

Repeat

similar

task

Repeat

similar

task

Fig.2. Learning tasks’ scenarios.

will produce a vocal feedback of the count of the identiﬁed objects (e.g., Great. Now

you have found one red apple! You need to ﬁnd three more...). Alternatively, if the child

went and tagged a wrong object with his/her handheld device, the handheld device will

produce a vocal feedback and guidance for the child to further navigate and identify the

objects of the assigned task (e.g., Way to go! You need to ﬁnd four red apples. You have

found only one). The interactive adjusted learning level of complexity setting is meant

to encourage the children learning motivation, as well as to stimulate their learning

process.

3.2 Implementation

To illustrate the effectiveness of our proposed interactive educational environment, we

have implemented an application for the tasks explained in section 3.1 on the Google

Nexus S smart phone running Android OS using Google Android SDK. Figure 3 shows

the high level architecture of the application. The human control module provides the

required interface to the speaker, microphone, NFC reader, and the child. A small

database is used to store information about various tags in the environment and in-

formation about different users. The assessment management module is responsible for

tracking the child’s activities and adjusting the complexity of the task based on the

childs progress.

4 Related Work

Near Field Communication (NFC) and RFID tags have been increasingly used in recent

Human Control Interface

Tags

Database

Speaker

Assessment Management

Child

NFC Tag Reader

Fig.3. Application high level architecture.

years in various aspects of business operations and personal life. Use of RFIDs as part of

the educational process has seen limited activity. Kashiwagi et al. [15] have attempted

to evaluate the beneﬁts of incorporating real objects into a language learning system.

To accomplish this, the objects are labeled with RFID tags to allow a system to auto-

matically identify the objects. Audio questions prompt the learner to choose between

objects and provide corrective feedback for incorrect selections.

Yahya et al [16] presented a concept for a contextual interactive learning tool for

preschoolers that utilizes RFID tags. The children can grab an RFID tagged object and

pass it over an RFID reader which triggers the playback of a corresponding media such

as an audio or video describing the object.

RFIDs have also been used to develop active playtime games for preschoolers as de-

scribed by Hirokazu et al. [17]. The game is based on the popular ”treasure hunt” game

in which the proposed system provides hints about ﬁnding the treasure. The objective

of the game was not focused on the educational aspects but rather focused on reducing

the monitoring pressure of teachers during playtime.

Hunag et al [18] introduceda newinteractivetool for teaching ASL to deaf preschool

children. An RFID reader and an LCD screen were embedded in a tidy bear. Children

can place ﬂash cards on the bear to trigger ASL educational videos related to the picture

on the ﬂash cards.

5 Conclusions

In this paper, we describe a concept and a prototype for an interactive learning envi-

ronment for preschool children. We use mobile and NFC technologies to create a fun,

educational, interactive environment that allows kids to learn while they play. The inter-

active environmenthelps improving childrens ability to play,share, and collaborate with

other children. In addition, the environment improves children’s physical motor skills

and their understanding of the real physical world. We developed an application that

helps children to learn how to count objects using a 1-to-1 counting correspondence.

For future work, we would like to evaluate our proposed solution and deploy it

in a real preschool classroom to study the response and the impact of the interactive

environment on different children age groups. It would be also interesting to perform a

complete usability study for the interactive environment.

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