Visualisation of Blockplay in Early Childhood

Abstract

Observation of young children is common in educational settings. For trainee practitioners however, access to children is infrequent, and even then, only small amounts of observable activity can be captured. We have developed a cross-platform software application to support observations made by pedagogical practitioners. Our system combines game-oriented technology: 3D graphics, animation, physics and classical game artificial intelligence. The stages of blockplay are used to represent the physical play of characters, and social play stages and egocentrism define their behaviour. We present the graphical side of the system including visualisations options that expose the underlying functionality. The prototype system Observation which we believe is the first to employ 3D interactive computer graphics for visualising early childhood play, is available for download and evaluation.