J.A.S.P.A. was a Jump And Spell Preschool Agent. He came in 2 versions, one for younger children and another for older ones. To the CHI kids he was an alien robot although he was actually a disguised monitor. He interacted with the world via a layout of 26 pressure pads each corresponding to a letter of the alphabet.

Little J.A.S.P.A.

This version used recorded speech and, as letter are "typed", J.A.S.P.A. responded with the phonetic sound of the letter. Thus an association between the shape of a letter and the sound it stands for was made.

View a shockwave version of little J.A.S.P.A.

Big J.A.S.P.A.

Here, J.A.S.P.A. used text to speech technology. As letters were“typed” in, he acknowledged them by repeating them, displaying the last 10 letters. If a real word was entered, then J.A.S.P.A. was happy, and responded with an appropriate phrase. However if there was too much jumping on the pads he would become progressively more annoyed and eventually “break”. He complained in various ways so indicating his worsening mood. If J.A.S.P.A. broke then all he could then do was to repeat variations of the instructions of how to fix him. He continued to ask for help until one of the kids fixed him. He would then express his gratitude and be happy again.

J.A.S.P.A. also used eye gaze to illicit attention. He would probably look at the pad that was jumped on and then look the jumper in the eye. During idle times his eyes would wander around the room.