Four new on-line games are available to play for those of you who are curious AND British Sign Language users…
A collaboration between EyeGaze, the Deafness, Cognition and Language Research Centre (DCAL), University College London and Screen Learning has produced four wonderful games for Deaf children to play. The games all feature a group of adorable animated cats who guide children through a series of fun tasks including mathematics, memory tests, language comprehension and sequencing. However, these are not ordinary games and they have a more serious purpose. They have been developed in conjunction with educational psychologists, foundation teachers, usability experts and other specialists to discreetly build detailed profiles of each child who plays them by assessing the skills that underpin reading, spelling, mental arithmetic, emotion recognition, language comprehension, motor control and memory, as well as hearing and colour vision.
Screen Learning is an educational games development and publishing company who specialise in early years (ages 3 - 5). They provide tools to help teachers and education professionals working with young children, to identify strengths and needs, to measure progress and, potentially, to flag possible learning difficulties at an early stage.
The Department of Cognition and Learning (DCAL) Research Centre based at University College London analysed how Deaf children divided attention between on-screen tasks and signed instructions while playing the games and advised EyeGaze as to the necessary adaptations needed to ensure they were culturally and linguistically appropriate.
Director of DCAL Professor Bencie Woll said: “We hope that by making this software accessible to children whose first language is BSL, the abilities of deaf children will be more accurately assessed as they start their education. This is an important step to ensuring that deaf children get an equal start as they begin their school life.”
