Ned the Neuron: mobile, interactive neuroscience education for kids

描述（由申请人提供）：Kizoom正在创造一个令人兴奋的神经元角色世界，以激励学龄儿童了解和发展他们的大脑。在K-12公立学校的课程中，神经科学并没有得到重视，特别是缺乏适合7-11岁儿童的神经科学学习工具。如果获得资助，我们将为移动电子媒体开发一套独特的教育材料，以配合我们的首映电子书Ned the Neuron，这是一个关于有趣的神经元角色的故事，牢牢扎根于神经生物学，我们目前正在制作。这个新的资源包将使用一个激励神经元化身系统和尖端的移动交互（触摸屏，加速度计等），让孩子们对神经科学感到兴奋，并向他们介绍有关大脑如何工作的核心概念。我们的目标是：1；用真实的科学数据、科学家简介和多层次的方法开发综合课程

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Kizoom is creating an exciting world of memorable neuron characters to inspire school age children to know and grow their brains. Neuroscience is not emphasized in the K-12 public school curriculum and there is a particular lack of kid-friendly learning tools on neuroscience for 7-11 year olds. If funded, we will develop a unique set of educational materials for mobile electronic media to accompany our premiere eBook Ned the Neuron, a story about fun neuron characters firmly rooted in neurobiology, which we are currently producing. This new bundle of resources will use a motivating neuron avatar system and cutting edge mobile interactions (touch-screens, accelerometers, etc.) to get children excited about neuroscience and introduce them to core concepts about how their brains work. We aim to: 1. Develop integrated lessons with real scientific data, scientist bios, and multi-level educational games, to turn our Ned the Neuron storybook into an effective educational tool; 2. Develop a novel neuron avatar system - NeuroMe - through which children will earn points as they progress through the educational games and lessons allowing them to grow and develop their own personalized neuron character, which would further motivate learning; and 3. Test our products directly with kids to ensure that our approach does indeed raise interest in and knowledge of the nervous system in children of our target age group. In Phase II we will substantially expand our offering of educational eBooks and games to cover various topics in neuroscience, and develop a social networking component to our neuron avatar system - Build-A- Brain - wherein children will form connections ("synapses") with other kids' neuron avatars as they learn about neuroscience in a massively multi-player online brain - a true social NETWORK. By motivating and facilitating children to understand and appreciate the biology of their own minds, we will encourage the next generation to nurture this vital organ. By depicting real and diverse positive scientist role models in our applications, with particular attention paid to female and minority role models, we will increase interest in this and other STEM subjects. And by inspiring children to learn about themselves and the world around them we will promote future careers in the sciences.