Monday 24 September 2012

HTML5 enables interactive ebooks

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/mobile-gadgeteer/html5-enables-interactive-ebook-games-and-more/4148

storyplace print out

on the story place website you are offered this print out activity to so after the story i think this is a really good idea, even thought the activity is quite simple it keeps the user engaged after the story has finished and it alsogives them something to do without having to use thwe computer this is definately something i would like to look at when im thinking of my design etc

Story place topsy turvy tales





story place is quite interactive and definatley fun for kid as it gives you the option to name your character and choose your character, the actually story is animated, although there is a fair bit of reading in the none animated parts, the layour is very child friendly and the colours are bright and fun which i think children lik overall a good site

Storyline online



although this site isnt exactly interactive it is still quite intresting, what actually happens is that you select the story and it enters a youtube video where you hsve a narrator telling the story whilst the video plays on screen with the animated story i think it would appeal to children but i think it could be a little more interactive with the user. but overall it is pretty good

Magickeys.com nothing interactive here!



so this is magic keys.com.. suppoosedly fun stories online for kids....but to be honest this site couldnt get any duller if it tried, the books have no user interaction apart from the children get the grand task of selcting the next button,,, the images are not even animated and it is frankly so boring even the inital opening page where you can choose the stories is set out like a google the colours are dul and uninteresting and i dont think a child would sit and read the 20 odd pages in this book

Mr Picasso Head!



as i want to give my users a chance to create their own character for the webbook i decided to have a look at what is available at the minute, whilst browsing the web i cam across mr picasso head which i think is great, it encorporates and artist aswel i thought it was great that you could create your own style of picasso art with a variety of heads and facial features to choose from, it also allowed you to change colours and ad a signature i think kind of style would be great for my webbook idea and i definatley want to create something as good as this as i think it is brilliant and i want to add other body parts too so i think this would definately appeal to young children

children web books

http://www.mightybook.com/story_books.html






This webbook actually does look slighlty at art as it looked at the mona lisa, this webbook was interatctive in the respect that it was animated, but actually the user doesnt have a lot to do its just literally sit and watch, i also found that it was very slow and slighty boring. i did quite like the illustractions used on the webbook but that was probably the best thing about it

Monday 17 September 2012

Cbeebies!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/tikkabilla/stories/tikkabilla-dickwhittington/


  
cbeebies have a wide range of online story books for young children, although not about art they show like a more basic version of the direction i intend to head, what i like is the fact that the children can easily access them from the cbeebies website and they can pick which they want to read about however i find the actuall 'reading' of the story quite boring as its not very interactive although the character moves a little it to me seems quite dated i think the children should be able to acutally interact with the story or have like a small activity to do on each page rather than just selecting the next button, the actual website itself though isd great for young children the colours are bright and its full of characters that instantly get the childrens attention

More Books!



although this book still has a lot of information in i really like how it is written its much more appealling to children the words they have used are much more 'child friendly' in my opinion what i really like is how they use words like swirling sky and wavy lines and quiet lines it explains them in a quite childish way and i want to capture this in my webbook. overall looking at the educational books for young children i havent been massivly imopressed some have really good aspects about them but as a whole i dont feek they are very imaginative for young children and i feel i can definatley make the learning about art more fun.

Backtrack: The book wasnt so boring after all


Ok so the majority of the book was pretty tedious for youngsters, i did find this timeline in there and i loved it. i think it appeals much more to children than the rest of the book, this is the sort of thing i have in mind for my webbook i want it to go into thw history of art but in a fun way and i feel i can definately build on this basic timeline, i want to narrow the catergories a little i dont want to bombard children with info but i think this sort of idea could work really well as an interactive webbook so children can have a bit of fun with learning.

Library Fun : KIds Art Books




before looking at the webbooks available for kids i looked at actual real books.. if kids still know what these are haha. From the front of this book it looks quite exciting, well for a young child at least. but upon opening it i found it very disappointing, its just bombarded with text and very few pictures even i feel its a boring read 

Kids Art:Cutting And Sticking!

 after deciding on my target audience i decided to look into how art is taught in schools, i found many books about the education process and the curriculum for primary education however this one was the most helpful, it explains that art is not a core subject, which i believe it should be but also it tells how children are basically taught to cut and stick and explore their creativity, although i think this is great they arnt actually taught much about art history or art movements which i think is quite a shock to the system when u reach secondary school, from my memory of primary school i dont remember really being told much about any art movements or history ok so we had the usual  brief bit about van gogh and the endless colouring of sunflowers but i think i believed he was the only artist ever by the time i was 11 maybe children should be told a little more about art whilst young as somehow when you reach secondary school you sre thrown into this world where you are expected to know artists to resesrch for your artwork or you are expected to know something at least about art movements and theres me sat there thinking van gogh van gogh 
and vangogh i wonder if any other people thought this? haha! i also noticed in the book its says ways to help at home ok so all subjects are expected to be aided by help at home but i feel it is more relied on with art are parents really expected to teach their children everything about art movements?? ok i can feel myself ranting now but this is why i feel this is a good topic to look into as it is something i am really passionate about i love traditional art and i would like to see kids learning about it rather than cutting and sticking thats stuffs great but the history can be made interesrting too!


Target Audience: Children Nowdays!

after my brainstorm i began to think about my target audience i thought quite a lot about this as i wanted to actually think about people who may actually get a good use out of a webbook i decided that the age group i wanted to appeal to was primary school children aged from around 5-12 years old i feel this is a really good catergory as the younger generation of today are introduced to technology very early, for instance my young cousins aged 5 and 9 can pick up an iphone and very easily navigate their way round the phone and are able to make a phonecall, play on the apps and games and they can text all be it the texting isnt great but really at their age did i have a clue about technology? no i didnt not compared to this, a mobile phone was vertually unheard of and a conmputer in my household wasnt around until i was way older than this maybe around the age of 12/13 i began to really get to grips with technolgy but nowdays children are practically reared on it. i would definatly like to create a webbook to appeal to this younger audience but i also want to educate them too, actually show them that not all art is digital and actually make this learning process fun and i think it will appeal to them as it is computer based!

Research Project: Starting Point


I began my reseasrch project by making a brain storm of some possible ideas, i had a rough idea of the area i wanted to work in but i hadnt really narrowed it down to a paticular technology i knew i wanted to focus on traditional and digital art and possibly merging them together, but the more i got into my brainstorm i began to think about it on more of an educational term, like possibly educating people on traditional art and how they can be transferred to digital art, so in my brainstorm i have jotted down my ideas for possible ways of doing this. i think the idea that is most successful is the online webbook idea as i feel this gives me a wide scope to develop my ideas and it is something that has been done before but also that can be developed further. i intend to look into webooks that already exsists and see how i can develop this technology further.