Derek Joseph Turney

TVOKids Homework Zone

Homework Zone is a new site for TVOKids.com that organizes all TVOKids Content into educational strands and showcases the vast amount of educational content to help your child succeed.  Displaying Math, Science and Language as the key subjects your child can access content like Printables, Games, Videos, and Study Tips.

Role: Lead Developer and Site Architect
Launch Site: homeworkzone.tvokids.com

TVOKids.com - School Age Homepage

TVOKids.com was a complete overhaul on how TVOKids presented their games, videos, and other content to their users.  We changed our entire CMS and moved to Drupal and update from Flash 8 to AS3 and Flash 9 and 10 players.  It has provided some challenges integrating Drupal and Flash together to produce this site but the kids seem to enjoy their time on the site playing our Educational games.

The site has added the ability to tag all content via educational strands and also to provide related content via those tags.

We redesigned the site to provide more ways to access content but also made that content easier to find.

Other software that we have used is Query to benefit our kids using a colorbox to display games.  This allowed the games to display bigger for the kids to be able to read smaller text and be more immersed in our games. Our video player redesign has had an influx on the number of plays for videos and has created an influx of videos for children to choose from.  We added Brightcove as a partner to provide our streaming solution for the entire TVO organization.

Role: Lead programmer and Site Architect
Launch Site: www.tvokids.com

Fishing for Facts is a live webcast game show for TVOKids.com and the TVOKids TV.

The live game show was developed in Flash and had 2 teams guessing what the top answers to the polls were for a chance to win various prizes.  It contained a contest that allowed kids to enter and become at home contestants and win the same prizes as the teams did.

The flash applications contained a main game board that revealed answers as the teams guessed answers and a score board to tally the scores.  It was all controlled by a flash admin tool.  Stay tuned for write ups of each application in the near future.

Watch the first ever game show

Role: Programmer

TVOKids.com Pipeline is an interactive web and tv application to allow users to communicate with TVOKids TV, other users and TVOKids hosts.  Children can send out shoutouts to their family and friends and answer questions poised by the hosts or tvokids moderator.

The director or moderator also can showcase the latest poll results or add statements of direction for the TVOKids audience.

Role: Programmer

TVOKids.com Fishing for Facts Voting Page

Fishing for Facts is a live webcast game show for TVOKids.com and the TVOKids TV.  A list of 20 polls and over 70,000 votes from the TVOKids Kids spanned a 2 week run to March 19, 2009 and the live game show at 7pm Eastern. Stay tuned for the link to the live webcast and a video of webcast the next day

The live game show was developed in Flash and had 2 teams guessing what the top answers to the polls were for a chance to win various prizes.  It contained a contest that allowed kids to enter and become at home contestants and win the same prizes as the teams did.

The flash applications contained a main game board that revealed answers as the teams guessed answers and a score board to tally the scores.  It was all controlled by a flash admin tool.  Stay tuned for write ups of each application in the near future.

Role: Programmer

TVOKids.com - Super Comic Creator

Join the League of Super Citizens and create a comic dealing with citizenship. Users of TVOKids.com can select backgrounds, type in text, select characters and also select various items to help you create a story.

Various stories that were submitted by kids were selected to be included on the television show Super Citizens.

Role: Programmer
Launch Site: Super Comic Creator

TVOKids.com - TVOKids Golf

Using various TV spots from TVOKids.com we created 9 holes of mini-putt.  Teaching kids angle and force was the educational golf of this game.

Also, you can learn some golf facts and golf humour as Milton and Tumbleweed walk the course.

Role: Programmer
Launch Site: TVOKids Golf

TVOKids.com - Cosmic Bowling

This game will teach you the star constellations and 10 little facts about each as you complete a frame in bowling.

Role: Programmer
Launch Site: Cosmic Bowling

TVOKids.com - Tumbletown Bound

Problem solve with Tumblweed.  Tumbleweed needs a path to collect his seeds and reach his goal. Drag and drop items to form the path and watch Tumbleweed’s car move.

Role: Programmer
Launch Site: Tumbletown Bound

TVOKids.com - The Amayzing Spelling Fleas

Join the Ringmaster flea in a series of 5 games that test your spelling knowledge and concentration. This game has practice modes, and a challenge mode that tracks your results and even has a report card at the end.

Role: Programmer
Launch Site: Spelling Fleas