SMART LAMP FOR VOCABULARY LEARNING
Print books are proven to be crucial to reading comprehension for young children as compared to digital books. VocaLamp is a multi-feature smart lamp that improves the reading experience of print story books for young children by providing various vocabulary learning techniques with the use of IoT. The child can point a finger at the word and can learn about the new words they encounter. The words they learn are recorded for later for children to practice reinforced learning. At the same time, parents can keep track of the words their children encounter and help them learn about the new words.
Project Details:
Hardware Software Lab Project
University of Washington (MS in Technology Innovation)
Role:
Conducted Literature Research, Ideated, and Designed the User Experience.
Team:
Vinitha Erusu (UX Research and Design)
Abhijeet Saraf (Product Management)
Sumayyah Balamesh (Hardware Design)
Yiran Fu (UX Design)
Jacob Estep (Software Development)
Duration:
2.5 months
March 2022- June 2022
The Problem
Children when they start out reading at a tender young age, they are being exposed to a large amount of digital books and hence screen time, which distracts them and slows their learning. While reading from physical books is crucial for children’s reading comprehension, they find it difficult and cumbersome to learn about new words they encounter by having to refer from a dictionary every time. At the same time with parents being busy, they are not able to make enough time to read to their children and help with their learning.
Research Questions
At what age do children start building their reading comprehension?
How are print books better than digital books for reading comprehension?
What are the best ways for children to learn about new words they encounter?
How can we improve the experience of reading from physical books?
Research Findings
7-9 yrs are crucial to reading comprehension.
Early oral language skills predicted initial levels of reading comprehension and its growth between the ages of 7 and 9 years.
Print Books benefit reading compared to Digital Books.
The results of a study indicate that reading linear narrative and expository texts on a computer screen leads to poorer reading comprehension than reading the same texts on paper. This is because of the distraction caused by screen devices. Scientists believe this effect is related to the tactile sensation of holding a book.
Because of more print exposure, childrens’ comprehension and technical reading and spelling skills improved more with each year of education.
Vocabulary plays an important part in reading comprehension. The scientific research on vocabulary instruction reveals that most vocabulary is learned indirectly and that some vocabulary that is difficult must be taught directly. Thus, research supports using a combination of both indirect and direct approaches.
Direct instruction includes:
Providing students with instruction in specific words that are important to students’ understanding of a particular text.
Teaching students more general word-learning strategies that they can apply to a variety of words(e.g., root words)
Children learn word meanings indirectly in three ways:
They engage daily in oral language.
They listen to adults read to them.
They read extensively on their own.
Motivation and engagement help improve reading performance.
Having the right lighting conditions is crucial for good reading performance, sleep and eyes.
The appropriate colour, intensity and adaptability of light source is crucial for reading performance, and health and wellbeing.
Design Solution
A Smart Lamp that helps children learn new words from physical books by pointing their finger at the word.
Getting feedback on pronunciation and definition of words as a feature of indirect vocabulary learning.
A screen-free, engaging vocabulary learning experience by providing voice and light feedback when encountered with new words.
An app for children to later practice reinforced learning, and for parents to keep track of and help provide direct vocabulary instruction to their children.
Providing positive reinforcement, in the form of feedback, on number of new words learnt.
Adaptive lighting to improve the experience of reading from physical books.
Functioning
Software Architecture
Hardware Architecture
Working Prototype (Proof of Concept)
Final working smart lamp prototype.
Recognized words and ambient lux values collected into database and transferred to mobile application.
Refined Working User Interface
