Educational electronic toy for children

Abstract

A system where a child or other individual arranges one or more computer-recognizable characters on a working platform to spell words or provide a mathematical result in response to computer generated questions or prompts, the system then indicating whether the words or mathematical result is correct.

We claim:  
     
         1 . An educational system, comprising: 
 an object having at least one visually recognizable symbol thereon;    an emitter within said object for emitting a signal uniquely representative of said at least one visually recognizable symbol; and    an enclosure, including: 
 a surface for supporting said object, and  
 a processor, including means for receiving said signal from said emitter, said processor capable of identifying said symbol from said signal, and capable of identifying a position of said object on said surface.  
   
     
     
         2 . An apparatus for entering data into a computer, the data being entered via the placement of a plurality of objects on the apparatus, each object having at least one unique item of detectable data associated therewith, comprising: 
 a surface for receiving the placement of an object;    one or more detectors capable of detecting the data associated with an object placed on the surface;    a line capable of communicating the detected data from the apparatus to the computer.    
     
     
         3 . An apparatus as in  claim 2  whereby the detectors are capable of detecting the location of an object on the surface.