With about a month to go in the semester we better get going on
projects and papers
.
I’m very flexible about both. Your service requirement and project may overlap completely or not at all. For example, Rob’s service (part of it) and project are writing a face matching computer game for kids with autism. Kelby (and Erin?) have suggested making a physical memory game with cards. I’d love to see Brooke and Hunter expand on their Spelling-Man game idea (though its not required). Some of the rest of you have your service covered in a way that wouldn’t make a project. That’s OK, you’ll just do a smaller project. My goal is to get some great materials we can use to help kids with disabilities.
You may work in teams of 2 or 3 on your projects but working alone is fine too.
Here are a few ideas and I’m open to suggestions for more.
- Work with Diane Brauner to create tactile/audio/Braille books for beginning readers who are blind. Several teams could work on this and you might share responsibilities across teams. For example, one sub-group might be responsible for acquiring the objects to go with the book, another might collect the sounds, yet another might record the audio version of the story with sound effects. I’ll provide the funds for anything you need to buy.
- Collect words, sounds, and pictures for alphabet games. I have written a prototype game that allows a child to make a Braille letter using 6 keys just like on the embossers they use in school. I need words, sounds and pictures to go with the letters. For example, “T is for toilet” followed by a flushing sound is a big hit with the kids.
- I’d like someone to take charge of the labeled faces project. We have lots of faces now. We need to collect all the links, filter them for appropriateness (the T-shirt message is clearly out of bounds), get all the other members of the class to vote on the emotions represented by each (so we’re sure we’ve got a consensus), and put the links in a format we can use in future games.
- I’d love some ideas for keyboarding games (on a conventional keyboard) that would be interesting and exciting to kids who are blind. Maybe leverage and contribute to the sounds for the alphabet games, or maybe do something completely different. How about something like Battleship on the keyboard?
- Sounds, pictures, and words for a generalized matching game. For example a dog barking sound with the word dog, or 2+3 and 5, or A and “Dot 1″.
- What are some other game ideas that get kids looking at words and letters?
I’d like your “term paper” to be documentation and rational for your project.
Send me your project proposal by 9 November.