Smarty Pad Demonstration Programs

                       Iain Hawkins - July 1994

What's It All About-

The smarty-pad was originally designed  as  an  easy to use controller
which I made for  some  friends  who  have  a  child  who suffers from
a form of  Autism. Although he  was  often  in  a world of his own  he
did  display  a  high  degree  of  aptitude  with computers, and I set
about trying to  produce some  way  of  enabling  him to fully utilise
this ability. After consultation with  various  experts in the area of
computer  based  learning  for  the  young  the smarty-pad concept was
born.

What's A Smarty Pad-

The smarty pad controller consists  of  a  robust ABS plastic box with
four colour coded buttons on top  which  connects to the joystick port
of the Commodore Amiga. All the  functions of the games are controlled
from the pad, isolating your  computer  from the possibility of misuse
while providing the child with  an  easy to understand control system.
Tests have shown the Smarty Pad to  be considerably easier for a child
to use than either a mouse or a joystick.

The Smarty Philosophy-

The main idea behind the Smarty Pad is that the controller can be used
by a wide range of ages  for  a  wide  range of educational games. New
games are constantly being added to the list of available titles.
 One virtually unique feature we  can  offer is personalisation of the
software. The child's name will feature   in   the game and each title
is
individually  tailored  to  your  exact  requirements.  The  level  of
difficulty is set when the  game  is  written  and  all the Smarty Pad
titles are "Plug in and play", Plug  in  the  pad, put in the disk and
away you go.

About this demo-

This demonstration disk contains   versions   of   two  older and more
basic titles,  SmartySnap  and  OddOneOut.  SmartySnap  requires   the
matching  of shapes from  four  possible  options, And OddOneOut  uses
colour  recognition  to  identify  one  picture  from  four  which  is
different.
Both games on  this  disk  are   of  an  intermediate difficulty level
but registered copies can be set by  us to the level of difficulty you
want.

This software has been in use  now  for  several months and there have
been no problems with it under WB 1.2,  1.3 or 2.0. I haven't tried it
on a WB 3.0 machine  but  I  think  it  should  be OK. However in that
traditional P.D. fashion I accept no liability for any nasty surprises
arising from the use of this  software.  It  has been checked with the
excellent Virus Checker program for any uninvited guests.

For Further Information Contact-

                             Iain Hawkins
                           1 Bughtlin Place
                             East Craigs
                              Edinburgh
                               EH12 8UY