Scratch, Meow & Maker: Digital Panel of Emotions, Motor and Language Disabilities

Purpose & objective

PURPOSE:
Participants will learn that people with disabilities have emotions that deserve to be heard, and that communication with their families, staff who assist them and teachers is essential.
They will know how our students become innovative designers when developing a project identifying the global problem of people with motor and language disabilities to express their emotions, since it is difficult for them to use applications on electronic devices. Using computational thinking, they create algorithms and develop a prototype of a portable digital panel controlled with a Scratch program and a Meow card. They collect the data through the contact that the user makes with the panel, choosing the image of the emotion to express, and processing this data in the program, which will play an audio with the emotion in the voices of our students. Some emotions or needs can be:
I want to be alone
I need help
I love you
I need company
I am happy
I am angry
I am sad (and others)
Some affirmations: I am loved, I am fantastic, I am important, I am unique, and others.
A special option to listen a pray

OBJETIVES:
-Understand how to develop a project using design thinking
-Show empathy by recognizing that there are people in the world with needs who can improve their quality of life with technology.
-Recognize themselves as creators and innovators, contributors of solutions to real world problems.
-Through computational thinking, students design algorithms to program a solution to the problem in Scratch.
-Use technological resources such as the Meow card that adapt to Scratch and enhance the solutions.
-Collaborate with peers showing respect for contributions and comments.

** The Meow card allows you to receive keystrokes through a conductive medium. This connects to the Laptop and sends the data to the Scratch program, and receives it in the form of letters. You have 10 keyboard letter options to use.

Supporting research

Bitesize, BBD. Introduction to computational thinking. Source: https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/zp92mp3/revision/1

Daniela Grigis and Marco Lazzari. 2013. Augmentative and alternative communication on tablet to help persons with severe disabilities. In Proceedings of the Biannual Conference of the Italian Chapter of SIGCHI (CHItaly '13). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 17, 1–4. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/2499149.2499175

Ideo Design thinking. Source: https://designthinking.ideo.com/

Global Nursing, 2018. Emotional intelligence, resilience and self-esteem in people with
physical disability and no disability. Source: http://scielo.isciii.es/pdf/eg/v17n50/1695-6141-eg-17-50-263.pdf

Government of La Rioja. Educational orientation. Source:
https://orientacion.larioja.edu.es/necedidad-ed-especiales/defmotoricos/104-defimoto/190-discamot

Mégret, F. (2008). The disabilities convention: Human rights of persons with disabilities or disability rights?. Human Rights Quarterly, 494-516. Source: https://www.jstor.org/stable/20072851?seq=1

United Nations 2020, Department of Economic and Social AffairsDisability. Source:
https://www.un.org/development/desa/disabilities/convention-on-the-rights-of-persons-with-disabilities.html