- Thank you for the introduction and good afternoon.
I am Julia, and I'm a Master's student of Communication
Design and I'm going to present you Ahu.
That is a nomadic multisensory solution for children
playful learning.
First I want to say thanks to our Ph.D. tutor,
Miko Gehesmini that followed us during the whole project.
We worked together in IT lab that is a laboratory
of Politecnico in Milan.
and we do research in various domains such as learning,
and in particular for children with different abilities.
This is why we start our project focusing on design for
all process.
We wanted our project to be usable to every people
of our target, and it can be people with different needs
and different abilities.
This is why we focus our target on primary school children
and on an Italian public school system that included
neuro-diverse children.
Our starting point is play.
These demonstrate that play promote cognitive, emotional,
and physical abilities.
And in particular for children with special needs,
it's an opportunity to acquire new skills
in different areas.
Playing is influenced by several factors as indicators.
One, it can be parents or psychologists or therapists.
The object or the toy with whom they play during their
activities.
The children abilities; so the skills that they use during
the playing activities.
And the final one is the external factor that are
independent to the other ones.
Motion- based activities engage children naturally,
and (inaudible) demonstrate they promote and acceleration
of process learning through sensory information.
So it's important to give the opportunity to all the
children to have a sensory experience.
And in order to do that, we tried to understand what system
already exists.
And we discovered that there are multisensory environments
and multisensory platforms.
The multisensory environments more immersive
but they are movable.
Snoezolen focused on multisensory therapy.
Mediate is an (inaudible) space with interactive surface.
Magic Room has several (inaudible) objects connected
and focus on neuro-diverse children.
And Blue Room is (inaudible) with the sensory technology.
On the other side, the platforms are less immersive than
the environments one, but they aren't movable.
So for example, part of Aurora is they all feel around,
but no multimedia contents.
The other ones have only one projection,
so a very distinctive area in which children can play.
So we want our product Ahu to be movable
as the platforms, but more immersive.
That's why we build Ahu with two projection
fields, that promotes collaboration and competition between
children that can play in two different fields with
two different teams.
We developed also sound effect and light effect in order
to promote the reward and the immersivity of the system.
For do that, we used investigative research methods,
and we collaborate with 34 teachers from four different
primary schools and psychologists from two care centers.
In particular, we asked them to answer a questionnaire
in order to understand their technology aptitude
that includes the situation of the schools or the center.
And also, what is the best focus areas for the activities
that we are going to develop for them.
Then we did focus groups, to let them understand what
projection technologies are for real.
The first set of contents that we already developed,
in the initial prototype of Ahu.
And following these methods and the design guidelines,
we started to design the internal structure of Ahu,
that is made by Vuden.
In the bottom part you can see wheels,
and accessible compartment which you can find lights,
controlled by Phillips U-Bridge.
The whole system is controlled by two mini PC.
And you can find the Microsoft connect and the projector
on each side.
The top part of the structure is easily removable,
so you can access the whole component of the structure.
The external structure is made by PVC layer,
covered by an adhesive blackboard
in which children can draw.
But there is a little part without the adhesive blackboard
in order to see the LED strip in the internal part
controlled by (inaudible)
we developed our activity with unity apps,
connected to KINECT wrapper from AGTTP.
And in particular we developed two types of activity.
One is
(loud background noise)
sorry
that is the competitive one.
So the children are divided in two groups,
in two different fields,
and the Ahu will tell them a story.
And in order to go on with the story they have to interact
with the floor, so jump in the right solution to go on
in the story.
And with the LED strip,
the quality is not so good on the projector,
with the LED strip of Ahu they can see they score points
during the activity.
The second activity is Colorful,
it is a collaborative activity.
The children are divided into groups.
The first one see images on the floor with a specific color
and they have to tell to the other groups
what color they see.
The other groups with you go lights to search the right
color around the field,
positioning in precisely the position on the floor.
We conduct an exploratory study with 200 children of one
primary school and two pre-schools,
and we (inaudible)
So first we introduct Ahu to the children
as totem poles of an Indian tribe.
So in order to create a sort of magician experience to them.
Then we ask them to draw on the interface in order to
familiarize with it.
After that, they start to play the activities,
and finally we ask them to evaluate the experience
with Ahu.
The questionnaire are divided in several sections,
and as you can see most of the children like Ahu very much.
In particular, for the voice that engage a lot because is
a human voice, an emotional voice.
For the lights effect that they may see during the game,
the fact that they have to listen to a story
and work in group.
This is an important factors because they love to work
together and they collaborate each other;
in fact a lot of them ask if they can bring Ahu home
to play with their family or with their friends.
And after that, we collect data from video and we asked
two psychologists to find the key points to the affect
that Ahu has on the children.
In particular, I'm not going to explain it all in detail.
But it's evident in the drawing that the children
are enjoying the activity.
We noticed also that the more competent one, (inaudible),
and also the fact that they play the same time for
the same goal gives us all a sort of association and
collaboration and socialization between them.
There are all several effects on the teacher.
In particular, they are engaged too during the activity.
And they encourage children and motivated them
when they have some problems or they cannot do some task.
And they have very important rule during the activity
of regulation, that the children have to respect during
the game.
And after some month, the teacher asked the children to draw
the experience with us,
and it's clear that they remember the experience.
They draw Ahu in a very good way.
But we are planning to do another study in order to measure
the resonance and remembrance.
So if they remember an activity they enjoyed,
and also if they want to play again is a pleasant activity.
In conclusion, this is our starting point exploring the
potential of a multisensory system in a classroom.
And in particular we notice a sort of diverse inclusion,
so the children with disability are included spontaneously
during the activities,
and this is I think a good starting point for school
system with these new technologies for include all the
people in a classroom.
So thank you, and I'm here for question.
(applause)
- [Moderator] Any questions for our speaker?
- [Man] Hi, Etzee from Nuitech.
This is really cool work; I really enjoyed seeing it.
And I was wondering just a little bit more about the story
that you told about the totem pole and something like that,
can you tell me a little bit about you're trying to make
the technology a little bit more familiar,
but what impact did telling the story have for how the
children ended up playing?
Did you try any times where you didn't tell the story
and did they interact with it differently as a result?
- Yeah, because the Magic Room, the one the state of the
arts is made by us in the classroom,
and we noticed that telling a story around the playing
activities that can also be disconnect to playing activities
gives a sort of motivation.
So Ahu as a totem, he's a totem of a tribe,
and they feel like part of it.
- [Man] Also it gives them a role, in addition to
telling them about what the Ahu is, okay.
Very cool.
Yeah, I love the idea of the story, because I love the idea
of making it familiar and they have a role to play from the
context of the story.
Very cool, thank you.
- Thank you.
- [Moderator] Any other questions?
I have one last question.
What was the teacher's reaction to introducing the system?
Were they in general positive to adding more technology
to the classroom?
And did they see that as a positive for the children,
or did they see that adding more technology might be
detrimental to the children?
- In general, Italian school system is very slow in this
field, but I saw a positive approach of it,
because in particular the younger ones know the potential
of the technology and want to experiment more because of
every people has different abilities and maybe read the
text is not the best one to learn something.
So use the movement and use the other part of the body
can help a lot of children in that field.
- [Moderator] Thank you so much.
- Thank you.
- [Moderator] Let's give it again for our speaker.
(applause)