Interactive Computer Exhibits For Ages 3-8? 122
Johnny Mnemonic writes "My company has the opportunity to contribute to a children's museum in our area. We are a technology company, so I'd like the exhibit to be computer/networking related, and to raise the awareness and understanding of how the Internet, networking, and computers work. However, children's museums cater to a pretty young age group, 3-8 years old, so the the exhibit needs to be highly interactive, durable, tactile, and yet instructive of the concepts. Google fails to turn up any turn-key options, and, although the concepts are computer related, a computer-based exhibit tends to be too fragile and susceptible to withstand the rigors of 250 preschoolers/day. How would you design a display that meets these requirements and is still fun and educational?"
iPhone/iTouch (Score:5, Interesting)
Stick a bunch of tied-down iTouch there. I say this only half jokingly, because my two year old finds them extremely intuitive and interactive. She unlocks it, watches videos, plays her games just by recognising the icons and the buttons with their visible gestures. Because of these features, this is the first phone I've owned that hasn't been thrown, drowned or buried by her.
Physical logic gates? (Score:5, Interesting)
electrons and gates (balls and wooden toggles (Score:5, Interesting)
Imagine a vertical board with channels in it, these channels go to wooden gates (think mini teeter-totter), a ball might close a gate and rest there until another ball hits that gate and opens it (or possibly sends the ball in a different direction/etc.). Kids can experiment with setting the gates (positioning them A/B) and then hitting a button to engage the engine which drops balls through 9screw drive/bucket belt, whatever). An Example of an adding machine:
Binary marble adding machine - http://woodgears.ca/marbleadd/ [woodgears.ca]
Unfortunately I can't find an example online but I think you get the gist of it
OLPC (Score:2, Interesting)
Kids want to explore (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Physical logic gates? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Packet Data (Score:3, Interesting)
If you've got the space for it, I second this wonderful idea!
Apart from the sheer size of something like this, technically it's fairly easy... push a button at each hub to light up what path to go through. It could be wired really simply, with just parallel buttons for each route. It might require a bit more thought than a 3-year-old would put into it, but I think older kids would get it without much problem.
If there's enough space and budget, you could even use stairs or inclines to go up to a satellite relay, or down to an undersea cable.
packet routing (Score:5, Interesting)
A local children's museum has an exhibit that shows how "email is sent through the internet". It uses a pneumatic tube system to shoot wooden balls from a sender through a series of clear tubes to a receiver. The balls go through various T-junctions, which makes the actual route taken "random", and these junctions are labeled with city names. Balls are released at such an interval that regardless of the route, they still arrive in the same order they were sent. A combination of black and white balls allows the recipient to verify the sender's message. There's even a little ascii-type chart to map color combinations to characters.
When my 4-year old saw and heard balls being shot around the wall-o-tubes, she said it was "the coolest thing she'd ever seen." We spent a good half hour feeding the machine.
(I don't know if copying someone else's museum exhibit would be legal, IANAL.)
Re:Physical logic gates? (Score:4, Interesting)
Drawing screens (Score:1, Interesting)
If you can afford it and bother,
Have four terminals pointing inwards towards the middle, with a different color scheme for each terminal/sitting area. Close together so they can see each other and talk, but not each other's screen. For each terminal have a touch/magnetic pen screen, and a second screen with three colored buttons next to it. The idea is that pushing a button changes which of the drawings of the others you see on the second screen. Add Autowipe after some minutes, a wipe button for your own screen, which wipes your drawing for yourself and others, and a wipe button for the other screen, which just wipes what you can see. In case a concerned mom is worried that the kid a meter away is drawing something naughty.
Cost: more than nothing.
Why Us? (Score:5, Interesting)
Johnny Mnemonic (176043) writes: "My company has the opportunity to contribute to a children's museum in our area."
Well there Just Johnny, why Ask Slashdot when you've got experts at making kid-proof displays right there? They're the same people to ask just what kind of exhibit they'd like to have. What's the point of a computer/network oriented display? At the ages stated, there's not much to interest them. If it's not an outright concrete example, it's not going to do anything for them because it'll be an abstraction and kids that age don't cross levels of abstraction well if at all. They only reason to have a display based on what your company does is the PR for donating a display. The kids aren't the target for the PR so this is lost on them, and the parents or teachers could get the same PR input from a sign with your company's name. Go that way, and you can give the museum any sort of display they need. Might as well let the museum have the say. After all, at 3 to 8, how are you even going to get the instructions into their heads?
Hands-On Items I've incorporated into my class (Score:4, Interesting)
This is all I can think of right now, but I'll check my notes tonight to remember what else we've done. Good Luck!