Project Detail

Description

Talking Word Blocks

This is a 'building blocks' kind of flash game.
The object of the game is to make single-syllable words from two banks. See attached PDF file, which illustrates what the game looks like when we do it F2F with index cards on a whiteboard.

Desired platforms:
#1 priority: iPhone. Parents and children play the game on the phone to make words.
#2 priority: PC and Mac. School teachers and children using SmartBoard or Promethean Board


There is an onset bank (beginning) and a rime bank (vowel and final consonants). Users will drag and drop items from onset and rime to a center area, where the game will combine the two pieces and read the combined word aloud to the user as a whole word (text to speech).
• Bank on left side of screen: Onset consonant letters for single-syllable words, such as ‘f’ in fight or ‘bl’ in black. Control and select items from the bank using a ‘spinner’ (iPhone).
• Bank on right side of screen: Rime letters for single-syllable words, such as ‘ight’ in fight or ‘ack’ in black. About 210 items in this bank, some with multiple pronunciations. Control and select items from the bank using a ‘spinner’ (iPhone).
• For items in the banks, click-select will trigger an audio readback (text to speech) of the item in the bank (for example, if player clicks on ‘gr’ it will read back just sounds /gr/). If items in bank have more than one pronunciation (like –ome as in come/some and home/dome, a click will bring up a selection menu for each pronunciation). About 50 items in this bank.
• Center of screen: the items from the banks snap-to each other when placed in the center.
• Drag and drop items from spinner banks to the center . The items that have been dragged and dropped from the banks remain highlighted in the bank.
• The word that is made in the center becomes active for clicking. When clicked, the whole word will be pronounced out loud (text to speech). This needs to work even if the words are not real English words. If the word is a real English word (e.g., fork), software will read it plainly aloud. If it is a fake word (e.g., gork), software will read it with a question intonation.

I am interested in the game being open to other uses as follows: 1. Embedding as application in sites like Facebook; 2. Packaging it with a suite of other similar tools for manipulating words and word parts (to be developed).


Additional files submitted:
phongrams-bank1-1.pdf