News
Mouse Tamer is now open
We have published a working version of Mouse Tamer, the free app in the Little Tamers strand. Twelve trainers teach a child the mouse through play: no screen requires reading, and there is no such thing as losing. The version is not complete yet — we would be glad of your comments.
We have published a working version of Mouse Tamer — https://mouse.libooks.ae/. It is a free app in the Little Tamers strand, the digital companion to the printed course. The version is not complete yet, and we are opening it at this stage deliberately — to hear what people make of it before anything becomes final.
The idea is simple. A child arrives at the computer able to swipe a touchscreen. The mouse is an unfamiliar device: point the cursor, click once and twice, hold the button down, drag, press the right button. The trainer drills these movements through play and supports what the book teaches — the foundations of computational thinking. The metaphor works out literally: all through the course the child tames the mouse, and in the last trainer he assembles a program out of arrows and leads a mouse to the cheese — by then he is commanding it.
For the child it works like this. No screen requires reading: a voice and a pictogram lead the way. There is no such thing as losing — the child always reaches the end of an attempt and always receives positive reinforcement, while the result is recorded for the adult. Twelve trainers with four levels each; one level takes about four minutes. At the end of a level a result sheet is printed: a space for the name, the scores, the date — the sheet an adult signs and hands to the child.
Try the trainer: https://mouse.libooks.ae/ We would be grateful for your comments — mail@libooks.ae. We are especially keen to hear from teachers and parents who try it with a child: does the child reach the third attempt or does attention run out sooner, did he work out the rule without words, did everything go smoothly with the right button and with dragging. The trainer is made for a mouse — on a trackpad some of the tasks are harder.