Introduction

The Magic Forest is a learning environment developed as part of the Playground project. It is intended for children from four years old onwards.

Using the Magic Forest, children can play the Activities on the CD-ROM, modify and change them and ultimately create their own new Activities.

To enable non-readers to change and create new Activities, a pictorial icon language has been developed. Using this language, young children can define and change the Rules of each Object (character) in an Activity, and they do not need to master any text based language.

The program also offers a set of Backgrounds, several Objects and a set of animated characters that allow learners to create many different kinds of Activities.

In a very simple way, it is possible to form icon sentences that define Actions and Conditions, so that Objects can move themselves round the screen, or be controlled by the player(s). There can be a separate set of Rules for each Object. Those Rules are defined by Stones, which are placed in the scrolls/papyrus.

There are Stones to define Conditions (brown stones). These must be the first ones to be placed in the scrolls/papyrus. To complete the sentence, it is necessary to place stones that define Actions  (light brown stones). With the Control Stones, you can control characters or Objects, by using the direction arrows, the mouse or the joystick.

This environment does not use the usual Windows drag and drop technique. To move Objects, you should:

• Click on the Object (the chosen Object will be stuck to the mouse).

• Move the selected Object to the new position.

• Click again to leave the Object behind.

After several detailed studies, it was found that this form of mouse control was the most comfortable style for very young children.

On the web-page  www.ioe.ac.uk/playground, you can read more about the educational research studies that were made to aid the development of the Magic Forest.