We live in a visual world where everything is dependent on colors, movements, signals and animated characters that sell stuff or are our avatar in a virtual environment. Children at the age of 2 start realizing and perceiving their environment in that manner. To get a grasp of something they have to touch it.

Another way toddlers learn, is to imitate actions they see and hear. Moreover, this time in the development of children is crucial to their later experiences and has been woefully neglected yet re-invented. Elizabeth Wood and Jane Attfield emphasize on the concept of play in their Book: Play, learning and the early childhood curriculum, Sage, 2005 and I am with them here. I have been practicing as a teacher for almost ten years now and a vital part of my curriculum was playful and had garnered not only a wide success but also accolade from those who participated.

As we put the stress on play as a means of education in early childhood, it seems apparent to use a system that provides true interactivity and positive game elements at the same time. Microsoft Kinect has been featured in numerous publications and to get a understanding of its concept, please refer to Sean Kean, Jonathan Hall, Phoenix Perry: Meet the Kinect: An Introduction to Programming Natural User Interfaces, Apres 2011.

The game kinectimals represents a tool for early childhood education that harbors huge potential in terms of teaching Biology, Geography, Behaviorism and even sustainability. All that could be achieved by adding download-able content over the marketplace.

Before you read on, please watch these two videos:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Utp-wZzyOHY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&NR=1&v=4mSJr...

Biology

I would like to use this topic to expound on my idea since it is the most obvious.

The game could be used to explain what these cubs are, why they are so small at the beginning and what kind of different felines there are. So, the game features a

Tiger, a Lion and a Snow Leopard cub.

The narrator explains how they are different in phenotype: color, fur, eyes and so on. A few distinguishing tasks will help the child to learn what is displayed by pointing to the Tiger when prompted to do so. The difference between learning and learning by heart is not only a time factor but also a factor of applicability. The learnt content can be applied and understood [sic!] in other situations whereas learnt by heart content tent to be forgotten soon.

Next will be habitat: A map is displayed and the kid will learn where Tigers stroll, lions roar and snow leopards ski. Children and adults alike learn content in a much easier way when it corresponds to both hemispheres of the brain. Emotio and Ratio!

Later, the kid can choose a region and has to say what kind of feline lives there in which region of the world and habitat.

Efforts can be rewarded and success can be achieved by giving only positive experiences; adjectives like correct / incorrect, wrong / right, good / bad should be shunned or at least only the positive adjectives should be applied.

At the end the child can apply what has been learnt before in mini games, where it is allowed to choose the cub of her liking, placing it in its natural habitat and play with it for a while.

Machine learning / teaching as a multi variable tool

All this is part of an inferential multi variable approach to learning and teaching ( see Ryszard Stanislaw Michalski, Gheorghe Tecuci, Machine learning, Morgan/ Kaufmann, 1994) that I believe can open new pathways in early childhood learning patterns. Applications can range from hard facts to social and philosophical learning.

Speech recognition and maybe a standardized set of motions and gestures that can be applied in other learning games as well, may add to the success of the idea. Additionally, the teacher, trainer, kindergarten nurse must have a profound understanding of the hardware and the teaching patterns within. As it is of utmost importance that a kinect based lesson is to be executed and conducted professionally by means of certain knowledge of the system.

Augmented reality could also play a huge part in this multi variable approach of machine learning and teaching. This can and will be discussed later on.

One of many

I should emphasize that machine based learning can only add [sic!] to the already applied curriculum and not replace it. The telos herein is to enhance the multi variable teaching scheme in early childhood teaching and adult training and not downgrading it to a mono variable scheme that has been pursuit for such a long time. The kinect system can be harnessed for many learning strategies and should be utilized further on.

Our class rooms must return to an underlying imperative which is best described in this aphorism:

Teach thinking and not what has been thought [in a modern and positive way]!