After looking through some of the outstanding Augmented reality apps for all ages, and some of the particularly interesting ones for kids. I start thinking about investigating the story and trying to bring the most interesting and interactive parts in to my project.

‘The Worst Witch’

Main characters:

Mildred Hubble, a young witch who attends Miss Cackle’s Academy for Witches. Even though she’s trying so hard to behave good, the clumsy and daredevil’s personality leads her life into misfortunes in the school of magic.

Tabby Cat, Mildred’s company pets, who needs to teach the cat ride the broomstick with her, as to follow the traditions.

Miss Cackle, the amiable and benevolence headmistress of the school of magic.

Miss Hardbroom, the harsh severe teacher of Mildred, always not satisfied with her behaviours.

Maud Moonshine, Mildred’s best friend, a funny partnership in appearance.

Enid Nightshade, a friend of Mildred, a practical joker who is more likely than Mildred to get them all into trouble.

Ethel Hallow, a high-born, snobbish and vindictive classmate, always looks for Mildred’s trouble.

The key stages of the book that I tend to build on:

The novel begins with Mildred Hubble and the upcoming traditional assembly where all of the first-years are given their own black cats that they will teach to ride on their broomsticks with them. Unlike the other girls, who receive black kittens, Mildred receives a tabby cat, which she simply calls Tabby. The kitten is unable to sit on a broomstick, so Mildred carries Tabby in her bag. Miss Hardbroom disapproves and Mildred has to stop. Afterwards, another witch called Ethel Hallow teases Mildred about it, and dares her to turn her into a frog. Mildred loses her temper and turns Ethel into a pig instead.

In the next chapter, Mildred and Maud make an invisibility potion instead of a laughing potion in their class test.

In the next chapter, the girls are practising for a broomstick display for Halloween. Ethel lends Mildred her spare broom, on which she has secretly put a spell. During the Halloween festival, Mildred’s broom starts bucking, causing all the girls to fall from their broomsticks. The Chief Magician denounces the academy, and Mildred is summoned to a meeting with Miss Cackle and Miss Hardbroom the next morning. Mildred, fearing expulsion, decides to run away with Tabby.

When walking through the forests near the academy, Mildred hears voices through the trees and comes across a group of witches, headed by one who looks like Miss Cackle. After hearing their plot to turn every teacher and student witch in the academy into frogs, Mildred turns the group into snails, packs them into cardboard boxes and takes them back to the academy. At first, Miss Cackle and Miss Hardbroom refuse to believe her, but when Mildred describes the leader, Miss Cackle realises she sounds like her identical twin sister, Agatha. They turn Agatha and the rest of the group back into humans, Mildred’s interview is cancelled, and she is praised as a hero to the rest of the academy.

http://tieba.baidu.com/p/1566218690

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Worst_Witch

http://www.kidisalright.com/2013/07/style-icon-mildred-hubble-aka-worst.html

Augmented reality for all

Before works out the best Augmented reality apps for kids, I previewed this kind of technology for all ages, which this article below has given me some ideas of what a stander that Augmented reality applications has reached. So there are some apps that I am interested and would like to mention.

Pokemon Go as the most futuristic app has attracted the people around the world to go out and play with it.

Google translate

Talking about this app, I could say it has being developed very thoughtfully. The most amazing feature, it’s AR feature, is that could translate any languages via the camera into another in real time. So that no more tapping or picturing then searching, just simply put your camera in front of the documents or dinner menu and so on, it will translate immediately to you by covering the original while you aiming to the words.

Quiver

It is an 3D Children drawing apps, which combined with normal color filling books, anything you color on the book can bring back to life on your phone or ipad via this apps. I believe it does not only encouraged kids drawing desire but also helped building their confidence and imagination.

Starchat

This app with accessing your location and by using 360 camera showing you the stars or the planets that you are facing in real time. It helps people learning astronomy knowledges and also rise the interests of enjoy the sky that in front of you.

http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/best-augmented-reality-apps/

Augmented reality for kids

The examples that I have found on Youtube&vimeo:

Considering their age structure, I have looked through the apple app store found that the Kid’s category are separated into under 5, 6-8, and 9-11 years old group, as the first thought is presenting this with an app. In this case, under the research, I have found out that for under 5 is most likely to have pure story book apps and then over this age is likely have more games than storytelling but Disney own’s apps have a Frozen story book which includes little interactive parts that they can play with.

Nosy Crow & Disney Series

There is more immersive playing and learning for older children.

FriendStrip App

I have had a go to play a bit, it gives you several story board and you can select the one you want to do and then just pretend you are the main character and act with it. I had lots of fun picturing.  

Even though this age stage of children no longer fancy fairy tells that much but they do need to read. So that, I have browse through websites, looking for those books which are suitable for 6-8 children.

http://www.booktrust.org.uk/books/children/booklists/242/

Thus, according to their suggestions and my research, I have revised my initial project idea a bit.

The modified intended idea/concept of the project:

This is a project mainly for children, especially those who are at their younger stages, age are around about 6-8 years old. The app would be an interactive Augment reality story games, for which the character are all 3D modelled and children can chose which character she/he wants to be and by sending 360 their facial image to the app, it will end up like you in the 3D modelled story, and there is more game could interact with.

Still finding the books, which I could use,  as I wish to produce a series of it.

The initial light-bulbing idea:

As I was young, always wish to catch the light beam on the wall or celling, which looks foolish but it is strange kids are quite enjoy in it. Therefore, by what I was thinking, to give the effect of casting sorcery or showing your own magic figures by using gesture control in the further developed apps or AR games could be my feature, even though I have thought about using in projection mapping, the limitation of environment, time of the day, and also could be controlled light which is no longer suit my audience.

The intended idea/concept of the project:

According to the magical lights idea, it is made me think of fairy tells, as the fairy in there always have the magic power and the shining blinking dust follows them. An idea of reinvestigating/presenting fairy tells come into my mind.

As discussing with my classmates, we have came up with an idea, which children can go through a story according to their own wishes that means a same story could be end up differently with various intended personalities. So that, they could experience the story as a main character and fully immerse themselves in it as an entertainment games.

After the tutorial talk to Clive my tutor, he suggests to choose one story or make it a series. Searching through some press found that lady-bird have a series of fairy tell audio books, which I could make it video visible by utilising Augment reality. The suggestion being made was for the little children at their kindergarten stage, and a story will be presented by interactive cards. These would be used in nurseries and their teachers will be in charge of handing out the cards, once whoever finished a part of reading will get a card which relative to what they have read and play with it. The propose of this is for using reward theory combining with new technology to encourage children read when they are at their younger stage.

Research of Ladybird:

https://www.penguin.co.uk/ladybird/milestones/

First of all, the age stage of Ladybird sets, 0-18 months, 1.5-3 years, 3-5 years when at nursery, and 5-7 years which they are at their primary school period.

By learning the information which has given, I starts understands more about the younger children behaviours and their interests.

Since their age 3, a big bang of their imagination expected, in the other words, they will be start interesting in role play and most of the magical or fascinating stories. Therefore let them be a main character walk around with 3D modelled characters are likely attract them very much.

Learning from the article of British council, understands what would they be interested in is not enough to build an interactive game, but learn how to build the right app for right years of children would also important for helping them make the most out of our app/ game play.

https://www.britishcouncil.org/voices-magazine/can-apps-really-help-children-learn-languages