Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att-cb!att-ih!pacbell!ptsfa!ames!husc6!cmcl2!acf5!sterling
From: sterling@acf5.NYU.EDU (John Burr Sterling)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: little kids software?
Message-ID: <880001@acf5.NYU.EDU>
Date: 7 Mar 88 14:12:00 GMT
Organization: New York University
Lines: 24

I'm interested in software for little kids.  Say, 2 years old.  Is
there any thing out there on the Amiga?

For those who think this is a bit extreme, here is an example: If you
hit an alphabetic key, an object with that as the initial letter
appears.  Done right, this would be a neat dynamic diplay, like a
zebra racing across the screen, kicking up dust.  Or a big zipper,
that unzips and then zips back up again.  With the Amiga, there could
be good sound effects (eg. the clomping of the zebra's hooves) and a
voice saying the letter and the object displayed.  The critical
feature are that the kid gets interesting feedback for nearly any
input (even the non-alpha keys could be set up to do something fun -
maybe just display themselves, then melt or pop or fly away...).  And
that he does have some "control" over getting neat things to happen.
I know my son loves to play with the keys on my terminal when it's
offline.

Software that uses keyboard overlays are nice is principle, but in the
ones I've seen for the comodore-64, the overlays fit poorly.
Similarly joystick interfaces must be very "forgiving" so that the
child doesn't "get stuck" and not have anything happen.

Thanks for your time,
John Sterling
sterling@lang1.cs.nyu.edu