Sistema THEAD is developing tactile, low-cost and inclusive material so that blind children can learn to program.
Last February 12, Sistema THEAD together with the Ateneu de Fabricación Digital de Les Corts (Barcelona City Council), the B1+B2+B3 Association, Visual Disability Association of Catalonia, we have been collaborating to refine the prototypes of Tactile programming blocks included.
This initiative of the Sistema THEAD, a social organization that seeks to improve the training of teachers in 21st century skills, aims to create educational material in order to learn the basics of programming and creation of simple algorithms, with the aim of making it a truly inclusive and low-cost educational material. This material will be ideal so that both boys and girls with visual impairments and those without it can play and learn together the basic concepts of educational programming.
As Sistema THEAD team says, "if we create a material only for blind children, then it will not be truly inclusive". Also, "How can we create a material for blind children without involving them directly and deeply in its design and creation?" This is where the Visual Disability Association of Catalonia, B1+B2+B3 (www.b1b2b3.org) has collaborated with great success and generosity through Anna Morancho, David, Eudald and Paquita García who have generously offered his time and dedication to contribute to this design by giving all his feedback to the project, so that it really reaches the children and is useful to them. This association born in 1993 does a great job throughout the Catalan territory by giving and has made more than 30,000 accompaniments to its partners throughout these 20 years of history.
This project is being carried out thanks to the collaboration with the first of all the Ateneus de Fabricación Digital de Barcelona (https://ajuntament.barcelona.cat/ateneusdefabricacio), the Atenue of Digital Fabrication of Les Corts. Headed by Ester Romero and with the invaluable collaboration of Mari Cazorla, the Ateneo has carried out the important task of printing the prototypes in 3D and advising the project thanks to its great experience in creating inclusive materials of different types, how for example table games (parchís, 4 in line....) inclusive and other materials and projects for free citizenship. It is a reference public service in the regional city, which combines the concepts of Fab-Lab (Digital Manufacturing Laboratory) and Ateneo, of meeting and social collaboration. This university supports projects of schools, universities or researchers, in addition to being rooted in its neighborhood, Sants and its people.
In addition, a social enterprise that has broken into Barcelona, dedicated to making the invisible "visible" for the blind, is collaborating in 3D design. They are called Tactilens (https://tactilens.com), and they are great at creating 3D materials and other supports to facilitate the educational learning of any subject from universal and inclusive design from its roots.
The prototype, phase 1
This programming material, which is currently in the development phase, will consist of several programming blocks. The flag will be the block that will start, and there will be blocks to make movements (up, down, left, right) that will be tactile and tangible. There will also be other blocks that will perform different actions. The design is based on the reference application for learning to program, Scratch and specifically on its initial pre-reader version, called Scratch Júnior. There will be several games that can be played with these programming blocks, using movements on the table or using the movement of the body to follow the instructions, both individually and in groups.
We really want to be able to offer this improved prototype soon, which is progressing at a good pace, and we hope to have it ready in the next few weeks and test it in real environments such as preschool and primary schools.
We will keep you informed!!
¡¡¡A greeting from the Sistema THEAD Team, Teacher Training and Development, and much force!!!