LOGO-L> Verbal/Visual/Aural/Kinesthetical

["Ken Kahn" <KenKahn@ToonTalk.com>]

Tom & Adele Woods wrote in message
<1.5.4.32.19981123051027.006dbdd4@moose.ncia.net>...
>
>My priorities:
>1. Give students rich and varied opportunities to express their thoughts
>verbally, visually, auditorially, and kinesthetically.

I find this a very exciting idea to pursue. In this discussion I have been
emphasizing ToonTalk's visual/animated nature. These other sensory
modalities are important and I have made steps in that direction. ToonTalk
makes heavy use of sound effects. More interestingly, it uses both canned
speech and a text-to-speech engine. If you have a force-feedback joystick
(these cost about $100 these days), then when you use ToonTalk you feel the
vibrations of the helicopter engine, or the wall when you walk into it, or
the weight of something in your hand. Within the next 9 months I plan to
integrate speech input into ToonTalk.

Maybe it doesn't need to be said to this audience, but these modalities
should be available for kids to use in their own creations. For example,
ToonTalk not only uses force-feedback but gives kids the option of including
force effects in their own programs. Ditto for sound effects and
text-to-speech. And speech input when it is done.

I don't claim to have the answers for how to best use and integrate these
varied modalities. There is room for basic research, as well as a variety of
engineering efforts, to explore these issues.

Best,

-ken kahn (www.toontalk.com)


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