Emodiscovery, a free fun interactive game designed to help in the emotions understanding.

Emodiscovery is a free fun interactive game designed to aid children (8-12 year-olds) in their understanding of others’ emotions.

The app aims to teach and train children’s emotion regulation skills in regards to others through stimulated interactions between the user and a virtual agent.

The SMART-ASD project starts

The SMART-ASD project is an initiative financed by the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Commission, destined to improve the education and communication of students with autism and/or learning difficulties, with the help of innovative technologies.

The main objective of the project is the development and experimental evaluation of software and protocol to support professionals and relatives involved in the education of children with learning difficulties, who will learn to decide the most adequate technologic solutions in each case.


The project partners are:

Universitat de València, Autism & Learning Difficulties Group (IRTIC), Conselleria de Educación, Cultura y Deporte, Generalitat Valenciana, Autismo Burgos “El Alba” School, Fundacion Aucavi, “Aucavi” School, Mira'm Fundació, “Mira’m” School, Santcristòfol School, Konya Il Milli Egitim Mudurlugu (Konya Government), Turkey, Necmettin Erbakan Üniversitesi, Turkey, Selcuklu Ogr Fatma Menekse Ozel Egt Is Uygulama Mer, “Fatama” School, Turkey, Ataturk Ilkokulu. “Meram” School, Turkey, University of Bath, United Kingdom.

We present the Infoaccesible project

On thursday 29th, at 18.00, we will present the project Infoaccesible.

 Infoaccesible is a web page wich two main goals:

 - The first one is to help people with Asperger Sindrome through a more accessible University.

 - The second one is to describe the Asperger Sindrome to the pupils and the professors of the University, in order to a better undestanding of their colleage/pupil.

The Infoaccesible website is

http://campusinfoaccesible.blogs.upv.es/

 The project will be presented in the Universidad Politécnica de Valencia, in the Conference "Designing the society in 360º" Go to the Conference web site to get more info.

Telefonica Inclusion IT Award

Lorena Taberner, member of our team, has received the Inclusion IT Award from Telefonica.

Her work, in the Inclusive Contents project, gives support to the teacher of an inclusive and educational center by uysing Artificial Intelligence to suggest the adequate activities in function of the capabilities of the pupils.

We participate in the XIV National Congress of AETAPI.

We participate in the XIV National Congress of AETAPI.

On the 25th anniversary of AETAPI, our group goes to the Congress of this prestigious professional association of autism.

The congress will take place in Bilbao and San Sebastian, from 12 to Nov. 15, 2008.

On November 14 we will do presentations of our tools : miradasdeapoyo.org and Tic-Tac.

Neurofeedback to 'Retrain' Brainwaves in Children with Autism

Guy McCormack, a researcher from the University of Missouri, has carried out a study where many people with autism have played a video game called Space Racer, to win the game the player only needs to concentrate and pay attention. Researchers measure the brain activity by placing sensors on the scalp, the game changes in function of the brain activity, due this, the player needs to pay attention to the game to win it. The game consists in maintain some rocks on the screen while a sound is reproduced in the system, whenever the attention wanes, the rock goes down, changes its colour and the sound stops. Guy McCormack says "We are trying to awaken their brains. Often children with autism disconnect and we want to use neurofeedback to teach them how it feels to pay attention and be more alert. We want to teach them to regulate their own brain function"

Souorce: The Inquirer (Spanish), Science Daily (English), U. Missouri (English)

1. 
   

Tic-Tac: watches for people with autism

The Autism and Learning Difficulties Group are finalising the details of the ‘tic-tac’ tool which will be published in the weeks ahead and which has been designed to enable people with autism and/or learning difficulties to understand and manage the concept of time more easily in situations where they have to wait, to indicate available leisure time, to indicate the time which we have to carry out a task, in situations which can produce sensorial overload and in other situations which are thought to be useful.

Robots for social inclusion

The European project IROMEC (IST-FP6-045356) is intended to prevent isolation and dependence of children with disabilities and help them to develop their potential and new skills by means of an environment focussed on play that is backed up by robots that assume the role of social mediators and that can be adapted to the individual characteristics of each user. More information: http://www.iromec.org/