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I was recently asked to explain eye tracking to 4th grade students and talk to them about its applications.

What is eye tracking?

An eye tracker is a device that uses projection patterns and optical sensors to gather data about gaze direction or eye movements with very high accuracy. Most eye trackers are based on the fundamental principle of corneal-reflection tracking:

enter image description here

I did not have time to prepare an activity, and I showed them some videos and they asked me questions. They got it, but I don't believe this is the best introduction.

I was thinking something along the lines of Christopher Bishop's Royal Institution Christmas Lectures with volunteers and physical objects.

How would you explain it to 9-10 year olds?

melhosseiny
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  • What's wrong with "An eye tracker is a device that uses projection patterns and optical sensors to gather data about gaze direction or eye movements with very high accuracy. Most eye trackers are based on the fundamental principle of corneal-reflection tracking"? Weed them out early! – Pål GD Oct 21 '13 at 22:02
  • @PålGD This quote is for readers who are not familiar with eye tracking. This is not how I explained it to the students. :) – melhosseiny Oct 21 '13 at 22:17
  • I can't help but think that explaining the basic concept to them is fairly trivial ("the computer looks at you to see where you're looking"?, or in how much ever detail you want, or is that too basic for 10-year-olds, but anyway, you get the idea) and anything more complex would classify more as how-to-explain-stuff-to-kids as opposed to how-to-explain-eye-tracking (and thus not particularly appropriate for a Computer Science site). – Bernhard Barker Oct 23 '13 at 09:11
  • @Dukeling If you say to a kid the computer knows where you're looking, they're probably going to ask how. I'd try to explain why it's hard for a computer to measure gaze direction (compared to humans), corneal reflection, how the computer understands the image and how it can use a mathematical model to calculate the gaze direction. – melhosseiny Oct 23 '13 at 19:09

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