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Bulletin the University of Sussex newsletter
Puppet on a Screen
Sick of the mind-numbing effect of computer games on 'the kids of today'? Dr Mike Scaife might just have found the answer.
The team, which have been awarded a £380,000 grant by the EU, is working on the basis that young children can learn best through play. Building on the educational value children get from playing with puppets, they are planning to create a truly spectacular computer-driven puppet theatre. Through this, they hope to extend children's experience of interacting with computers at the same time as developing their cognitive abilities and teaching them new skills.
Mike is keen to point out that the children who use the Virtual Reality Puppet Theatre will be programmers as well as players: "the important thing is that they don't just design a play and then watch it. They're constantly interacting with it." As he says, this is where the educational aspect comes into play. "When you're forced to reflect on what you do instead of just doing it, you get much more powerful cognitive tools...by externalising their thoughts onto a computer, kids will learn more and learn it faster." The project is not only conceptually innovative, but it will be using a radical research tool - the child's imagination. Mike is hoping to observe the way that children play with glove puppets, and to use what he observes to help create the virtual theatre. He needs children between the ages of 4-8 to be 'informant designers' - designing the eventual product by imagining aspects of it through their play. If anyone knows of any children who would like to spend a n hour playing with puppets in the name of science, please contact Sara Jones on 8983 or email Sara@cogs.susx.ac.uk. Friday 13th November 1998
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Along with colleagues Yvonne Rogers and Hilary Buxton, Mike is developing a 'virtual reality' puppet theatre which will use the graphic power of a Playstation - towards an educational aim.
The team envisages the virtual reality theatre to have a screen big enough for audiences to watch the puppet plays, which will be created by the children in partnership with a computer. The child may use something like the data glove - which is currently used in virtual environments - to control the puppets. The data glove has sensors which allow the wearer to 'manipulate' a virtual environment by moving things around. Mike's data glove could be in the form of a hand puppet, so that the puppet the child manipulates on screen matches the one they have on their hand. With this glove, they could control scenery changes, scripts and characters, as well as reacting to impromptu scenarios created by the computer itself. 
