TurtleTalk - An Educational Programming Game for Children with Voice User Interface.

Interest in programming education for children is growing. This research explores the possibilities of utilizing voice user interface (VUI) in children's programming education. We designed an interactive educational programming game called TurtleTalk, which converts the various utterances of children into code using a neural network and displays the results on a screen (Figure 1). Through VUI, children can move the turtle, the voice agent of the game, to the target location and learn the basic programming concepts of "sequencing" and "iteration." We conducted a preliminary user study where eight children played the game and took part in a posthoc interview. The results showed that voice interaction with TurtleTalk led children to be more immersed in the game and understand the elements of programming with ease and confidence.