=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-2747/paper23
|storemode=property
|title=Interactive Toy to Strengthen the Memory, Attention and Logic of Primary Education Students Using Sphero, Arduino and Neurosky Mindwave EEG
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2747/paper23.pdf
|volume=Vol-2747
|authors=José Esquicha-Tejada,Susan Pari-Larico,Brandon Llerena-Urday,Álvaro Fernández del Carpio,Karina Rosas-Paredes
}}
==Interactive Toy to Strengthen the Memory, Attention and Logic of Primary Education Students Using Sphero, Arduino and Neurosky Mindwave EEG==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2747/paper23.pdf
Interactive Toy to Strengthen the Memory, Attention
and Logic of Primary Education Students Using Sphero,
Arduino and Neurosky Mindwave EEG
José Esquicha-Tejada1 Susan Pari-Larico1, Brandon Llerena-Urday1, Álvaro
Fernández del Carpio1, Karina Rosas-Paredes1
1
Universidad Catolica de Santa Maria
{jesquicha, 72137021, 76310875, afernandez, kparedes}@ucsm.edu.pe
Abstract. Due to the importance of primary education to acquire basic
knowledge, it is necessary to use technological tools that allow students to
provide their knowledge through educational games and that allows generating
the necessary feedback to know the level they are. Using interactive toys
implies developing basic skills in learning, necessary for the integral
development of students. The present investigation develops an interactive toy
that measures the attention, memory and logic of primary level students;
Through the Sphero and the Neurosky MindWave, the speed will depend on the
attention that the user has, instead the logic and memory measurement is
developed with the help of a 6X4 track, the control panel and a mobile
application showing the logic and memory questions. The results show that 5th
and 6th-grade students of both genders have fun learning and take interest in
interactive toy, strengthening logic, memory and attention through the use of
technological equipment.
Keywords: Interactive Toy, Atenttion, Memory, Logic.
1 Introduction
The training of primary education students is of the utmost importance due to the
rapid development of capabilities and abilities, mental, cognitive, psychomotive,
social and affective [1]. According to [2] the children like to play with someone or
have fun with a game that implies a challenge. In child psychology [3], mention the
importance of the interactive toy that will be able to develop the cognitive and
affective part of children.
Currently, there is a great diversity of interactive and technological games that
allow activating different cognitive areas of children, constituting a key part in its
integral development [4]. Playing is no longer considered as a pastime, but allows the
child to discover, interact, explore and experience with movements, sensations that
form a concept in the world [2], [5]. There are several investigations that allows
Copyright c 2020 for this paper by its authors. Use permitted under Creative Commons
License Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).
1
teaching them programming by robots [3] or by the Lego blocks can learn with
different construction games, with high costs within scope for the children of Latin
America [6].
Since the mid-2014, the Arduino plate became well known because it allows to
develop several innovative projects and provide customized solutions according to the
situation raised, several projects have been created that allows to encourage the
education of children [7], [8], [9].
The proposal aims to capture attention, strengthen the memory and logic of
students, through an interactive toy; Which, through a mobile application developed
on Android, answer the questions, return the attention values and, on the web page,
you will register to users and generate the appropriate reports. Additionally, the
proposal has a physical control command that allows to move the toy car by means of
a 6x4 track with obstacles. Finally, to capture attention to the Neurosky MindWave
will be controlled by the Sphero that is a device in the form of a sphere that has
wireless connection.
2 Related Works
Although E-Learning has many advantages for students and teachers, it brings
with many challenges also, since the teacher cannot monitor whether students are
paying attention, that is why [10] propose an intelligent system of e-learning that
predicts video based on emotion, by a Neurosky brain wave detector to predict
appropriate adolescents. Neurosky can also be used in areas of health and
entertainment as they report in [11] through a Parkour game system capture "degree
of attention", the "degree of meditation" and the "Electro-Oculogram (EOG)" of the
participants to help control hyperactivity disorders and also to patients with cerebral
palsy. Then, there is another research that allows controlling a car [12], according to
signals captured by the Neurosky device either by levels of attention, meditation or
blink, that when processed you can identify the orientation that the truck must be
followed and that it is your route.
Open source projects, each time has a larger audio demonstrating its effectiveness
in education [13], has the 2 projects proposed by [14] using sensors and music for the
development of basic aptitudes of mathematics and physics. Finally [15] developed 2
applications, one for patients who need a rehabilitation process of lower or higher
extremities, and the other application for therapists to keep them updated the progress
and improvement of patients, this was implemented with Raspberry Pi and Arduino.
3 Materials and Methods
For the development of the project, we are based on the methodology of extreme
programming (XP), which consists of the following stages:
Planning. - The user stories are elaborated together with all researchers, with
the support of psychologists and the interviews prior to students.
2
Design. - The mockups of the mobile and mobile web functionalities are
designed from the user stories.
Coding. - It consists in the preparation of the code of the mobile application
and the web system, of the Arduino plates, the control board and the toy car.
Tests. - Functionality tests are verified by module implemented through
psychologists specializing and experienced developers. Acceptance tests are
validated with students, in three educational institutions.
Interpretation of results. - With the data obtained, comparative tables are
made of the responses of the students in the two types of tests made to reach
the conclusions of the investigation.
There was a group of 104 5th and 6th grade students from three types of schools
(private, state and para-state).
4 Implementation of the Project
For the understanding of the proposal, the project architecture is presented (see Fig.
1), which shows the elements that communicate with each other, and comply with the
proper functioning of the system and strengthening the logic, memory and attention of
students of 5th and 6th primary school.
Fig.1.Architecture of the Project
The elements of the architecture of the project are:
Teaching user. -Earchard of the student's record in the web system to which
grade has been assigned previously, as well as their identification in the
application to initiate the tests. In the web system you can also see the reports
by student, grade, and edit their profile.
Director User. -All the teacher can be identified in the mobile application, has
all the degrees assigned to its disposal and can see the reports by grade in the
web system and edit its profile.
User student. - It is the one who performs the two types of test through the
mobile application, the same user or his parents have the possibility to
visualize their results by the web system.
3
Web System.- Performed in HTML, with CSS, PHP and Bootstrap
Bookstores, Fontawesome, Highcharts and Dompdf, for this means users can
see the results of the tests.
Mobile application.- Developed in Java for smartphone devices with Android
operating system, the same one that performs the two types of tests to the
students; This is communicated with the database (Volley Library), Sphero
(Robotlibrary) library, Mindwave (ThinkKear library), and the control board;
These last 3 communicate through Bluetooth.
Sphero. - Programmable sphere that will be mobilized according to levels
attention student, previously linked with the smartphone.
Neurosky Mindwave EEG. - It has as purpose, obtain the attention values, to
record the average attention in the database.
Control board. - Send signal signals to the printed toy car (forward, right,
left) and access button, so that the student can continue answering questions in
the application, inside the Mega Arduino has to comply with these functions.
Toy car. - Receive signals from the control board to mobilize the two tires
connected to the bridge H of the Nano Arduino found in the interior of the car.
Web server.-The Apache server is used for the proper functioning of the web
system and the application, with the respective connection with MySQL.
Database.-The base used is MySQL, in charge of storing the information of
the users and the responses of the tests.
5 Tests
Project tests were made in three educational institutions with a total of 104
students, in two parts:
- The memory and logical of the students are evaluated through a 6x4 matrix,
which through a toy car is moving according to the orders that the students
provided on the control board (see Fig. 2).
- The level of attention of the students registered with the MindWave and eaters
as evaluated, is the Sphero sphere (see Fig. 2).
Fig. 2. Control Board
4
5.1 Logic and Memory Test
This type of test consists in controlling the 3D printed toy car to advance on the
obstacle track using the control board, and responding at the same time logic and
memory questions, the process is described in Fig. 3.
Fig. 3. Activities Diagram – Logic and Memory Test
The questions of this test are answered through the mobile application, it is given
4 options to the student for each question, so that he selects the opposition he
considers correct (see Fig. 4); To enable the response option, the student has to
continue to be mobilized by the obstacle track.
Fig. 4. Mobile Application Interface (Logic y Memory)
5
5.2 Attention Test
This second type of test is to measure the student's attention, the sphere (Sphero)
moves at a speed according to the student's attention level that captures the headband
of Mindwave. The steps to follow are (see Fig. 5).
Fig. 5. Activities Diagram – Attention Test
At the top of the mobile application (see Fig. 6) the student's attention and
meditation values is shown, in the central part a joystick to control the Sphero in case,
a clonomer that will start at the time of receiving signals of the Mindwave. The little
joystick serves to calibrate the Sphero.
Fig. 6. Mobile Application Interface (Attention)
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6 Results
For this research, was experienced with the logic, memory and attention of 104
students of 5th and 6th primary (10-12 years) in three educational institutions, of
which 35 belong to a school of Misses, 35 to a college of males and the remaining 34
to a mixed school. For reasons of confidentiality, we will call them together School 1,
School 2 and School 3.
Fig. 7. School of Misses and Males
In Fig. 7 shows that, the School 1 of Misses and the School 2 of Males have an
increase in logic, memory and attention according to the degree they are studying (5th
and 6th degree of primary), that because children are constantly development of their
brain over the years and technology promotes this [16].
Fig. 8. Mixed School
Respect to Fig. 8, it shows that in the Mixed School, it has the same trend as in
Fig.7, that the overview of years are higher percentages than their predecessor.
7
Fig. 9. Survey about Interactive Game
Finally, the total of students had been made a set of questions linked to interactive
toy, in Fig. 9, shows that 58% seems very interesting, 38% interesting and only 4%
indifferent, the result reflects the interest it has on the game.
7 Discussion
The results of this investigation are in a medium-high range, as well as research
[17], where participants reflect higher attention levels by interacting with a toy or a
digital object. Also regarding research [18], our averages of attention during the test
are between 60 and 70%, both projects are based on stage games, to maintain the
interest and high attention of the participants. Finally, it is verified that participants
who came to obtain better levels of attention have higher percentage of hits in logic
and memory tests, this is in relation to research [19], where students have a middle in
meditation and attention, so they get a smaller qualification in the exam.
As noted in Fig. 9 our toy showed a high level of acceptance by participants as in
[20] that proposes a game using Arduino showing high level of enthusiasm in the
participants. Also, in [21] the results show the highest level of satisfaction in those
participants to make use of Sphero.
Finally, [16] is in accordance with our results shown as it concludes that the
cognitive development of children with technology brings good results. This
conclusion is based on research [22] where repetitive sections in the participants
entail better results, as they are reflected in our research where the participants of
higher grades had better results compared to others.
8 Conclusions and future works
Apply integrated games with technological objects in education, it is of great
benefit for students, as these compared to conventional games, are to be more
entertaining, increase motivation and managing to capture the attention and interest of
8
the students, so, it is a resource that must be taken advantage, since it contributes to
the development of intellectual skills and capabilities.
With the Arduino plate, the toy car, the command board, the 6x4 track, Neurosky
MindWave EEG, and Sphero was achieved to develop an interactive toy that allowed
to attract attention and entertain the elementary students and improve their memory,
logical and attention.
The evaluation of the 104 primary education students allowed to verify, that
students with better levels of attention, logic and memory are the superior years, due
to the development of the brain reached in school ages.
The integration of the sphere (Sphero) was achieved with the Neurosky MindWave
EEG, so that, when the student reaches the level of concentration required, this is
reflected in the speed of the movement of the sphere, that is to say higher
concentration greater speed and vice versa, lower concentration lower speed.
The didactic toy has an acceptance of 96% of the 104 students surveyed, in three
different educational schools of primary, showing that students have an entertaining
learning to develop memory, logical and attention.
With the developed proposal, the schools are expected to adapt new learning
strategies to learn the deficiencies of the students in the different degrees, since it is
necessary for teachers and managers to use new technological tools to complement
the student's methodology.
Acknowledgments
The authors express their gratitude to the Vice-rectorate of Research of the
Universidad Catolica de Santa Maria for the opportunity to develop this research
(Resolution 24710-R-2017).
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