To use PYA tool or not for learning Japanese hand alphabets

摘要

We are developing an easy-to-use edutainment system: Practice! YUBIMOJI AIUEO (PYA). The objective is to promote basic expressions of Kana characters (AIUEO) of Japanese hand alphabets (YUBIMOJI) to ordinary children at elementary school age. PYA seems to work well from users' behaviors and responses, however, the effectiveness has not been fully confirmed, so far. In this paper, we have carried out series of intensive experiments at classrooms of Sumiyoshi Elementary School (7 or 8 years old; 83 subjects). The results are summarized as follows: 1) Devices the children use to learn do not affect the performance just after the study; 2) the PC use is effective when the target characters are complex and similar; and 3) The PC users keep remembering difficult shapes of characters after one month. These results have suggested that the use of PCs is superior to the ordinary oral lectures, however, it depends on the features of characters.