Developing Intelligent Sketch-Based Applications to Support Children’s Self-regulation and School Readiness

Abilities for fine motor control and executive attention are aspects of self-regulation that contribute to children’s school readiness and achievement, and can be taught and improved through sketching and writing activities. Recent interactive sketching applications have emerged to assist children in developing self-regulation skills through playful learning interfaces. Existing applications tend to focus on rote-based activities where children trace over shapes with little to no feedback for children to self-regulate their learning and monitor their improvements. In this paper, we present our initial childcentered intelligent sketching user interface prototype called EasySketch, designed to support children’s development of self-regulation skills, particularly fine motor, accuracy, and attention-related skills. Our prototype improves upon existing applications by providing immediate evaluation and constructive feedback for self-regulated learning of sketching and writing skills. In the process of evaluating and providing feedback to improve self-regulation, our sketch-based application teaches children pre-reading and pre-math skills such as writing digits and letters.