AreaArchitect

Role: team member

Course: Educ 281 - technology for learners

partner Organization: open mind school

overview

Open Mind School (OMS) is an inclusive school that celebrates neurodiversity. Our target learners were middle schoolers at OMS, many of whom are on the autism spectrum and exhibit nonverbal communication. Their primary method of communication involves the use of communication boards with alphanumeric graphics that are pointed to one-by-one to articulate words or sentences. Often times, these students are supported by a communication specialist. Many of them also suffer from motor praxis. Our aim was to address how we might bring math learning to where OMS students are already interested and having fun, by using real-world applications while they communicate nonverbally and have certain motor limitations.

AreaArchitect is a multimodal experience that allows students to imagine themselves as architects and design their dream homes. The digital interface provides the teacher with an adaptable framework to teach real-world math concepts. This empowers the teacher to facilitate the problem solving process and guide discovery in math for her students. Area Architect also includes a Model Board, which is a whiteboard graph that provides a tactile interface with magnetic components for students to work together to solve math challenges