Videos http://skid.org.in/

* Arpit, a child with cerebral palsy, using Skid
* Portable Skid: how Skid, loaded on a $250 Linux netbook, can
allow non-verbal kids to speak in a manner similar to Professor
Stephen Hawking
* Editing in Skid : a short video explaining how to type, scroll
and delete text

Welcome to the home of Skid software, which is designed to help kids
communicate and learn. Children who cannot speak properly, including
many with cerebral palsy and autism, are denied access to a regular
school, even though they could communicate in other ways, for instance
using a computer. It is such other ways, that Skid explores.

Children have different disabilities, to different degrees, and not
seldom combinations of disabilities. Software that seeks to take
advantage of the unique combination of abilities of each child
therefore must come in almost endless variety. Then again, the
software needs to be able to grow as the child grows.

The manner we seek to address this challenge in Skid, is to have large
numbers of tiny modules in the software, that the user can select and
combine, based on the specific task she wishes to perform. This should
make it also easy for large numbers of students and care givers, even
those with modest programming skills, to design new modules for Skid.

To download the skid source code via command line, use the command
"svn co http://rubypython.svnrepository.com/svn/skid"

In fact, skid is also a platform where we actively encourage friends
to come join us in developing new modules. Many students are taking
advantage of this opportunity to learn cutting-edge web programming.
Here are some presentations on different aspects of the skid software

Skid is designed to be used via one of the following means of input:

*

joystick or racing wheel (so far only works under Linux, needs
special client software. Different clients exist for one button, two
button and five button operation).
*

arrow keys and space bar (via free Windows and Linux client software)
*

mouse
*

touch screen

A good place to start is the picbrowser module, which lets the child
browse through the pictures in the images folder. This module allows
you to select a picture for photo-editing. Each time you click the
smiley, the subfolder of pictures shown to you changes. This works
well with the recognize module, which presents you with one large and
several small pictures from the subfolder you were last looking at
with picbrowser. One of these is the same picture as the large one.
The software tallies the number of times you picked this correct one,
and present you with a fresh challenge each time you make a choice. At
any time, you can go back to picbrowser to change the subfolder used
to pick pictures in the recognize module.

The module easypic encourages children to start learning how to spell.
While picbrowser, as above, lets them serially scan through many
pictures, easypic lets them home in on the one they are looking for,
by selecting the first few letters of the name. The name of the
picture thus picked is added to the text the child is typing when you
navigate away fromthe easypic module, making this an easy way for the
child to type.

We hope that the combination abcd, easypic and words will help those
with dyslexia. For instance, a child looking for the word “suspenders”
might not be capable of spelling it, but could perhaps be taught to
recognize, that it contains the sounds, and therfore the characters
“s”, “p” and “d”. If the user types these characters using the abcd
module, then switches to the words module is presented with the
choices “spend,spilled,stepped,stopped,suspenders”, from which it
should be easy to select and thereby type the correct word. To select
a module combination, please go to modules or to the module selector
, which allows you to select and deselect modules by simply clicking
on their names in the choices.

Modules for wikipedia browsing,changing fonts and colors and simple
image and text editing have been recently added.

Arun Mehta
arun.mehta at gmail


http://skid.org.in/
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