Indeed, I've always said that the answer to solving the challenges and cost problems with special education is to leverage our technology to the maximum. It will be the only way that we will be able to have one-on-one communication in the classroom for teaching and learning in special ed. Each year, there are more and more high-tech tools changing the landscape in this sector of education, and it's good to see we are solving all of the challenges in short order. If you have a few moments, I would like to talk to you about all this for a moment.
You see, not long ago, on March 17, 2012 there was an interesting article the Wall Street Journal by Christopher Shea. The article was titled; "Really Talking with Your Hands - Oh Yeah," and the article stated that; "The deaf and people who have lost their voices may someday have a new way to speak, thanks to Digital Ventriloquist or DiVA," and the article explained how the software works which allowed folks with "high-tech gloves equipped with sensors and tracked their movements in three-dimensional space," to use hand signals, or sign language recognition and then put those words into documents, e-mails, or even text messages.
You see, not long ago, on March 17, 2012 there was an interesting article the Wall Street Journal by Christopher Shea. The article was titled; "Really Talking with Your Hands - Oh Yeah," and the article stated that; "The deaf and people who have lost their voices may someday have a new way to speak, thanks to Digital Ventriloquist or DiVA," and the article explained how the software works which allowed folks with "high-tech gloves equipped with sensors and tracked their movements in three-dimensional space," to use hand signals, or sign language recognition and then put those words into documents, e-mails, or even text messages.
A few years ago, I was talking with one of the lead scientists at one of the largest corporations involved in LED lighting, and he was working with an MIT group developing a special glove, and I suggested to them that they ought to use these LED sensors on gloves, and use that to track the hand motions of individuals, enabling software to learn how a person moved, which could then program Avatars, make cartoons, or take a famous actor, and allow him to play parts in movies even if he wasn't there to do the acting for the scene.
We talked about all the potential possibilities for such software using these special gloves, and one of the things that I thought was the most interesting was of course being able to use this software for special education, or people who are deaf, anyone who was unable to talk, had severe arthritis, or other challenging handicap.
It is my belief that this newest software which only takes about 100-hours to train for a particular user would be able to do all that and much more. Indeed, I am quite impressed and it does take rather a lot to impress me these days, so, I am giving this a 10 on my 1-10 scale of great technologies for important education applications. If you have interesting future education technology available, please shoot me an e-mail, because I'd like to talk to you about it, and discuss it at our think tank. Please consider all this, and think on it.
Article Source: Lance Winslow
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