AU2003203350A1 - Electronic Educational Writing Aid - Google Patents

Description

Australia Patents Act 1990 Complete Specification Standard Patent Electronic Educational Writing Aid Technical Field: Computer Engineering and Education The following statement is a full description of this invention, including the best method of performing it known to me: Electronic Educational Writing Aid The ability to handwrite and draw is an extremely important part of our everyday life. It is a means by which we can communicate and present personal expression. Even in today's computer society, the ability to handwrite both fluently and legibly is an essential skill that all persons should be strongly encouraged to learn.

For the purposes of this specification, the term character refers to alphanumeric characters of any language; whole words of any language; characters for character based languages and; graphical images such as art sketching and drawing.

The aim of the EEWA is to assist users learning the skill of constructing characters or graphical images. The EEWA (Electronic Education Writing Aid) consists an electronic display showing a user how to construct characters.

Showing a user how to construct a character by way of a visual motion model is far superior then by using a static model.

Via a computer monitor, the EEWA in real time graphically shows the user how a character is drawn. As the character is drawn on the monitor, the user can trace the characters creation thereby encouraging the development of the fine motor skills required.

The EEWA electronically records a character drawn by the user and provides the user with feedback about the success of the character they have drawn.

A database within the EEWA records the success of characters drawn by each user. Diagnostics configured within will provide the teacher with both individual and overall user statistics. With this information the teacher may efficiently customise class lesson plans with the aim to focus on any areas of weakness identified.

Currently, one-on-one time is the method that a teacher must use to help children who are finding learning to handwrite difficult. However, it is not practical or realistic that a teacher will be able to provide every child in a class with the amount of one-on-one time that each requires. Naturally, the development of skills must suffer. A teacher may direct a child to practice specific characters using the EEWA leaving the child directly unsupervised for short periods. This will minimise the one-on-one time allowing the teacher to better distribute their time within the classroom.

EEWA Background The concept of the EEWA was conceived after observing the difficulties experienced by children learning to handwrite. These difficulties included constructing: anticlockwise characters in a clockwise manner (ie. letters a c d efoquv w); clockwise characters in an anticlockwise manner (ie. letters b hj kmnpr); S double rotational characters in various styles (ie. letters y g s); S characters to large or to small; and S item characters at the incorrect position.

Introduction 2 For many children, developing the fine motor skills required for writing is not an easy task. Correcting developed skills that are not correct is an even more difficult exercise. Along with this difficulty comes frustration which further compounds the task of correction. The frustration is not limited to the child as both teachers and parents must work hard to encourage and guide the child to correct any bad habits.

Maintaining concentration is another skill that is not easily performed by many young children. A child will shift their focus back to their writing book after diligently watching the teacher construct a character on the blackboard. Whilst shifting focus some children will lose concentration and forget what the teacher had shown them.

With these experiences, the EEWA was conceived while watching children playing with a magnetic drawing board. The toy consists a tablet encapsulated with iron filings and a stylus with a magnet in its point. When the child moves the stylus across the tablet the iron fillings are attracted towards the screen surface leaving an image.

The concept of capturing the character drawn by the child similar to the process used by the magnetic drawing board developed to also rating the child on the success of each character drawn and showing by visual motion the method for constructing a character. The concept of the EEWA has further expanded to include any character or image that is drawn by hand with similar feedback provided.

Design Requirements for the Electronic Educational Writing Aid Hardware A standard personal computer system (with exception of the monitor) is required. The PC is required to be capable of running a standard programming language such as or Visual Basic along with a database application such as MSDE and/or MS Access. The faster the processing speed of the PC will enable faster evaluation of characters drawn by the user.

For the monitor, the following factors are considered important. The monitor: should enable touch screen input via a stylus only and reject input from direct touch or by any other device; screen must be flat and able to be laid flat during normal operation to replicate a book; For cost, a capacitive digitiser was chosen as the device for the development of the prototype however a Tablet PC offers the most ideal method of implementation as it best resembles the environment of writing on a pad.

Design of the Electronic Educational Writing Aid Cross-Correlation: The Character Comparison Technique Cross-correlation is the technique of comparing one(1) signal against another signal looking for the level of similarity between the two(2) these signals.

The discrete equation for Cross-correlation is: 1

N-

rY -L x(n)y(n k) where Lag k is N N 2, N -1 Equation 1: Discrete Cross-Correlation Equation The character drawn by the user is recorded as a bitmap and compared against a master bitmap of the character selected by the user to draw.

A digital signal for each bitmap is created by stringing together the value of each pixel.

For example, the first string of bits below represents the bitmap pixel's of the character drawn by the user and the second string represents the pixel's of the master character bitmap. The arrows for each string depicts the direction that the string should be imagined to follow. As the two signals are passed by each one another, the correlation or similarity between the signals is compared.

01101101101001101110100100011010011010011011010011011101 0 0100100101110110101011010000100101001010111001000101001-> The comparison of the two signals as they step pass one another means that the cross-correlation algorithm can take a long time seconds) to be performed. Naturally, the speed of the PC processor will have an impact upon the run-time of the algorithm, however minimising the size of the signals passed to the correlation algorithm and the amount of signal overlap has a major impact upon the number of executions that the program must perform. However, care must be taken to ensure that accuracy is not sacrificed in attempts to reduce execution times.

The bitmap needs to be large enough to accommodate larger characters such as M or W as well as giving the user a reasonable area to draw upon. The disadvantage of having a larger bitmap means that the bitmap image signals are longer requiring many more executions of the crosscorrelation algorithm resulting in a longer processing time.

To optimise the image signal, the limits of the drawn character needed to be identified so that only the bitmap area of interest is coded onto the image signal. To achieve this, each row of data is analysed for the detection of any pixels having a logic value one(1), indicating that part Appendix G: Master Character Pixels Vs UJserdrawn Character Pixels of the drawn character is in that row. The first row having a pixel with a logic one(1) is recorded as the upper drawing limit of the character, and the last row having a pixel with a logic one(l1) is recorded as the lower drawing limit of the character. The same process is performed for the columns of the bitmap to determine the left and right drawing limits of the character.

The character drawing limits information is then used to isolate the specific area of the bitmap image signal for processing through the cross-correlation algorithm. As the two signals are passed by each other, the correlation figure is calculated and if a figure better than the previous pass, the latest result is recorded as the best correlation figure.

Figure 1 outlines the process used for evaluating the character drawn by the user. The various programming languages used throughout this project have had different procedures for performing this process, however all follow this basic concept for deriving a solution.

Figure 1: Character Evaluation Process To prevent the user achieving a perfect correlation by colouring in the whole picture, the number of pixels of the master character and the number of pixels in the character drawn by the user are recorded for comparison. If there is a significant difference between the two, the character drawn by the user is rejected.

To determine the level of similarity between the two bitmap characters, the resultant cross-correlation score is compared with a perfect score, the perfect score being the actual number of pixels in the master bitmap.

The resultant percentage provides the level of correlation between the two.

Rarely will the character drawn by the user be the same size as the master character, let alone have the same limits. However, it is important for the cross-correlation process that the optimised bitmaps have the same dimensions. To allow for this situation, the greatest width Appendix G: Master Character Pixels Vs UJserdrawn Character Pixels 6 and greatest height of both bitmaps is recorded and used as the final dimensions for the optimised bitmaps.

The current prototype depends upon there being a full set of master bitmap files, i.e. one for each character. The creation of each of these files is not a small task, however made easier if a font file is available.

The requirement for each of these files is a restriction that prevents the application being easily adapted to other fonts. Future enhancements will have the creation of the master character bitmap file performed at execution time based upon the font type selected.

Character Line Width Compensation.

Equations have been developed to compensate for the narrower line width of the drawn characters in comparison to the line width of the master characters. Even the best user drawn character will have a different number of pixels to that of the master which has a direct effect upon the resultant crosscorrelation figure introducing a significant error.

To reduce the effect of this error, an equation is evaluated and applied which compensates for the difference. More than one compensation equation is often required for a set of characters.

Claims (9)

1. The Electronic Educational Writing Aid consists application software in conjunction with a personal computer having a flat screen monitor that the user interfaces with using a stylus.

2. The Electronic Educational Writing Aid of claim 1 visually shows the user in realtime how to draw a character selected by the user.

3. The Electronic Educational Writing Aid of claim 1 records in realtime the strokes necessary to draw a character such that the record may be replayed by the user for use as a guide.

4. The Electronic Educational Writing Aid of claim 1 replays the recorded strokes of claim 3 such that the user can visualise and/or trace along with the character as it is drawn on the monitor.

The Electronic Educational Writing Aid of claim 1 records in realtime the strokes performed by a user.

6. The Electronic Educational Writing Aid of claim 1 using the cross-correlation technique compares the character drawn in claim 5 against a master template of the user nominated character and provides feedback of their correlation.

7. The Electronic Educational Writing Aid of claim 1 records the results of claim 6 with reference to the user in a database.

8. The Electronic Educational Writing Aid of claim 1 consists statistical data analysis tools which interrogates the data of claim 7 to track the progress of an individual and/or group.

9. The Electronic Educational Writing Aid of claim 1 contains application software specifically written under this patent for the purpose of achieving claims 2 to 8. Applicant: John Bernard Murray Date: Ist April 2003