Virtual Excursions for Tiny Fingers: A Shared Experience

Currently, kindergartens in Malaysia use books, photographs and model of real objects to teach children in the classroom. The use of computer software to assist in the teaching and learning process is very rare. Thus, this research was carried out to introduce an educational multimedia application to kindergarten children. The contents focused on objects in the public spaces, and created in the form of a virtual tour. Images of common public spaces were taken using average digital camera and stitched together to create a wide-angle panorama. The interactive virtual tour provided four different panoramas which were the lake, the beach, the zoo and the playground. In each scene, the objects (hotspots) were labelled and they could be clicked to reveal the description. As such, children learn about objects in its authentic environment. Preliminary experiments were conducted at two kindergartens to examine young children´s capability in using the mouse to navigate and to obtain their response towards the virtual tour application. The findings from these experiments indicated that it is viable to use virtual tour to teach young children because of its simple navigation and the representation of objects using actual images. It was observed that the children enjoyed using the application and they could use it intuitively.