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Abstract - MicrosoftKinect is a low cost natural user interface (NUI) device compared to other NUI solutions. Inspired by the Kinect Effect while keeping in mind the lack of educational games for kids on Kinect and lack of physical activities on other platforms, we propose Kinect Academy-a research project that fills the gap by providing educational application for children which is filled with activities. This project uses Kinect's NUI capabilities to help children learn by letting them have fun while learning. This projects aims to be a tool for educators to teach children while keeping them physically active by being to interact with educational materials in a new and fun way. Kinect Academy tries to achieve our aim by using Kinect to make learning fun and linking it with an open and collaborative web platform for education.
Keywords: MicrosoftKinect, Kinect Academy, Natural User Interface
1 Introduction
Most of skills that children are going to use for the rest of their lives are developed during their child's formative years. During this time when they are developing their language and comprehension skills, it is of the utmost importance that they have a solid foundation of literacy and numeracy upon which they can build their further knowledge. The research of Ainley and Fleming (2000) shows that learning to read in the early primary years helps develop children's literacy skills. Also, The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, which works towards Quality Education in Developing Countries explains the importance of education in economic developing countries by mentioning that literate and educated citizen have better economic opportunities, better productivity and better health (Global Development and Population Program). However, many children cannot access to education at this age, especially children from the poor countries due to lack of infrastructure.
To support children from poor countries to have access to education, International Monetary Fund (IMF) has been providing monetary assistance to developing countries of the world towards achieving United Nation's Millennium Development Goals (Factsheet: The IMF and the Millennium Development Goals, 2011). According to IMF's report, in developing countries enrollment of children in primary school has generally improved and the percentage of students completing primary education has also improved compared to 1990's. However, surveys conducted by IMF have found that completion...