A Brisbane produced children’s TV and multimedia series starring a talkative possum could soon be teaching English to children across Asia.
The series, called Chattertime, is being pitched as the 21st Century Sesame Street– sold with CDs, interactive website, computer games, a karaoke video camera and mobile phone interactivity like reality TV shows.
Its creators, Dr Anne Purcell Kolatsis a researcher with The University of Queensland’s Business School and co-producer Dina Brown, are producing a pilot after winning an $60,000 grant from the Federal Government’s industry arm, AusIndustry.
The show will use computer animation, music and dancers to help teach English as a second language to children under eight-years-old.
Chattertime will revolve around the exploits of a Brisbane family and a boy who has a trusty hand-puppet possum that comes to life as the digital character – Chatterbox.
“When other people aren’t around this hand puppet toy morphs into a photo-real, digital character whose mouth can mirror human-like speech production,” Dr Purcell Kolatsis said.
Each program would be sold as a 24-minute package or two 12-minute episodes, with different themes, such as the weather, emotions or body parts.
“As the show goes to air in any particular region the children would be able to call in via SMS and speak to live English speakers.
“So there would be a question of the day for example and the child could phone in with their answer. And they would have to give their answer in English.”
Dr Purcell Kolatsis, who studied under the creator of Sesame Street, Professor Gerry Lesser, said Chattertime was different to Sesame Street because of its focus on oral language skills, accompanying education package and use of digital animation to teach language.
“Chattertime aims to take language learning away from textbooks, worksheets and oral drills.
“The only things that will be text based are the parent manuals. Everything else is audio.
“It’s for the modern, technically-digitally savvy kid.”
ABC TV Asia Pacific is interested in screening Chattertime free-to-air throughout Asia, India, Micronesia and the South Pacific with a potential market of 25 million viewers.
Media giant Disney will also be presented with the concept next month before the pilot deadline of July 4.
For more information contact Dr Purcell Kolatsis (phone: +61 07 3381 1232, email: a.purcell@uq.edu.au) or Miguel Holland at UQ Communications (phone: 3365 2619, email: m.holland@uq.edu.au)
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