It talks

Last night had a little bit of a break thru’ with speech synthesis using Java and got a piece of code to say “I am noogy”. Actually, it sounded more like “I am noogie” but that’s close enough for me. I also started reading up on how to create your own voice coz the default one sounds a bit too mid-West for my liking. I’d love to get it to sound like a Janner but that might be pushing technology to breaking point.

Project progress 1

So far my progress has concentrated on researching the feasibility of the project.

I have investigated similar projects such as Mediate and have been reading research papers on the benefits that immersive environments have on children with learning difficulties not just suffers of autism. Whilst there seems to be the general opinion that these environments have a benefical impact on the child, there is a school of thought which questions the validity of this by asking if the child only associates the skills he has learnt to the environment he has learnt it in and consequently cannot transfer them. With this in mind, using the environment as a teaching aid might not be the best use for it, maybe as a place where the child can relax, experiment with technology and just generally play could be the better option.

In parallel with the above, I have also been exploring technology. My first thought was to make the space a big room where the child could just walk in and start doing things however following on from a meeting with Chris, I’ve now been looking into virtual environments such as Second Life and into the possibility of building my own. Second Life unfortunately just doesn’t run on my Mac. It starts and after a couple of minutes it hangs the entire computer so constructing my own environment might be the answer. I’ve experimented with coding a couple of VRML scripts and although it did seem quite hard I can see how a template could be built and used to form the basis of a virtual space.

As suggested, I had a chat with Katina about my idea. She really confirmed something that had been nagging me at the back of my mind with regard to association and the transference of new skills into the real world. A suggestion she gave me was to use the environment as a research tool. If one of the characteristics of autism is the inability to collaborate with other people then why not see if using the environment has any impact on that. If part of the problem is the ambiguity of the real world then perhaps in a virtual world where everything is straight and easier to understand that won’t be a problem. An interesting angle.

Finally, is this a good use of my skills? If I’m having to learn new tools and techniques, would it not be better to either use them in an area that I’m more familiar with or use tools and techniques that I am familiar with already to develop my project. The problem with that is, what I know is, arguably, phone based and as my quick research has shown, this is something that is beyond the scope of the majority of the suffers of autism unless the interaction with a phone is made easier – which could become my area of research.

Small update

Following on from my meeting with Chris yesterday regarding changing the project to be mobile phone based and in so doing, use my “expertise” in this field, I’ve performed a little experiment with my daughter to see how she interacts with a mobile phone. I developed a game called BluPong for mobile phones last year and I sat down with her to try and get her to play it. Whilst the enthusiasm was there, the fine motor skills to control the bat with the small joystick or the numbers wasn’t. Next was to try and get her to take a picture with the inbuilt camera but again this was a bit of a failure as she just didn’t understand. Considering her language skills, texting was out of the question.

So next up was to see just how many children in the senior part of her school had mobile phones. Fortunately being friends with one of the TAs helped and after a quick phone call the figure is zero. Not one has a mobile phone and her comment seemed to back up my theory in that they just don’t know how to use them. If something that is phone based is the route I should take then it needs to be really easy to use, possibly even use speech (recognition and synthesis) as well as keeping to my core principles of cheap and tailorable. This is likely to be hard but then, isn’t the project meant to be?

Hmm

Chris has got me thinking again. It’s my own fault – top tip: don’t mention any extra curriculum work you’re doing at the start of a project meeting, glad I didn’t mention the mobile wallet thing! So I’m sorta back to square one. Do I work on the thing that I think I wanna work on, or do I work on a thing that everyone else thinks I’ve got the skills for? Answers on a postcard please. I think it’s a couple days of deep soul searching for me.

Quick chat

Had a really good chat with Katina today about my project. Chris suggested I talk to her about it due to the work she’s doing with Infinite Infants. I ran thru my ideas, what I originally wanted to do, what I think I want to do now, pretty much everything I talked about with Chris in my first meeting. Collaborative play/working came up and researching to see if children with autism will do it more via computer than in the “real world”. This is brilliant, I never even considered that angle before. Kartina suggested a virtual room which they can colour as they want and do stuff in but with the ability to invite their friends in for a play. As one of the core values that I want to keep with the project is that “the thing” must be tailorable to fit the child, allowing them to decorate the room as they want definitely fits that. Something to bear in mind, as Katina said, the front end should be something that can run on a large touch screen as well as a monitor so everything needs to run off one-click.

This is all brilliant. Time to track down building virtual worlds.

Another VRML test

Right, I’m slowing getting the hang of it. Thanks to another tutorial, I’ve simplified the code for the original box and have managed to sit it on top of a bigger box that’s twice the length and width but half the height. I’ve also made the top box a transparent green in colour and used one of my photos from The Simontron as texture for the 2nd box. Pretty impresive I’m sure you’ll agree – watch out Linden Lab. Be amazed by clicking the link below.

2nd VRML test

VRML test

Below is my first test in writing a VRML script. Not quite sure what I was doing but I guess it’s a start. If you can’t see anything then you’ll need a plugin, this is a pretty good place to find some – http://cic.nist.gov/vrml/vbdetect.html. I think I’m gonna have to use some sort of WYSIWYG coz that was quite an effort to write and unfortunately it looks as though 3D Studio Max is the way to go – thought I kissed that goodbye a couple of years ago!!

VRML test

1st meeting

I had my first meeting with Chris earlier in the week but it’s taken me a couple of days to go thru’ the stuff we talked about.

We discussed how people with autism find it easier to relate to computers coz there’s no ambiguity of expression, how they tolerate rather than co-operate. I told him of one of the papers I read on an immersive project which said how beneficial the participants and their families found it and conversely another paper said how the participants only associated a particular action with the immersion environment which kinda defeated the object.

Something Chris said about a project or a demo of something where these kids hit a virtual ball between themselves, a bit like the Eye Toy, and collaborative working has got me thinking. If children with autism relate to computers and game consoles better than people, then would they co-operate with someone else via a computer? Second Life came up again – I really MUST get that working. It might be too complicated for some sufferers but it’s got the unambiguous of expression that would be useful. VRML came up which I had a dabble with years ago but got scared off but then again I didn’t really have a need to learn it unlike now.

Something that I must keep in mind is that I need to make sure that I can keep my distance and still be objective. I obviously have some emotional involvement in autism so it’s important that I don’t let that cloud any issues. Also, I shouldn’t look at it as “another month, another game” – don’t worry if that doesn’t make any sense to you, it does to me!!

So, what’s next? I still wanna visit a couple of immersive projects if only so I know what I don’t want to do if you see what I mean. I also wanna visit a couple special needs schools. If my core idea of making sure that this is as affordable as possible, I ought to see what they will think of it

First meeting

I’ve got Chris as my project supervisor and we had our first meeting today just to set some ground rules – what he wants from us, how he does things, that sort of stuff really. He also gave us a top tip about the project and researching it. If we think of it as a triangle and at each point is one of our areas of research that make up the subject we’re researching. We then look for stuff that covers one or two of the points. Right, I’ve lost you now haven’t I? Yeah we were a bit like that when Chris explained it so he did an example and as luck would have it, we used my project. My three things are open source, immersion and disability so I need to find stuff that covers each of them as well as open source & immersion, and disability & open source and, well, you’ve probably got the picture now. He also made a really good point that the chances are, the only person to have any sort of interest in all of these three points are us and by the end of the project we’ll be the experts in the thing that covers all three – now that’s a bit scarey.

We also got our timetable of meetings for this term which I really wanted to get sorted as soon as possible. What with working, I need to map my life out for the next few months (perhaps I should be entering this under Space). So, all in all it was a really good meeting….now the hard work begins.

Project proposal

My initial proposal for my project is to make a learning/teaching “thing” for children with autism. Although people with the disorder share symptoms, autism affects each sufferer differently so I want this thing to be tailorable to “fit” the individual. I’m saying “thing” at the moment coz I don’t know if I want to make a package of software or make a total immersion environment. I’m leaning toward the latter but I’m a bit concerned about time scales. Whatever I do, it has to be made using open source tools for two reasons. Firstly cost, as I see it being of use to special needs schools it has to be affordable – these schools are a bit strapped for cash as it is without forking out on new tools. And secondly, I’d like other people to build on it and adapt it as nesessary. It would be nice to see open source being taken up by education but that’s another issue.