Kinect, Special Needs and Autism
At Little Angels School we have been trialing the use of Kinect in our classrooms.
Kinect is a motion sensing input device originally developed by Microsoft for the Xbox 360 video game console. It basically enables users to control and interact with the Xbox 360 without the need to touch a game controller, through a natural user interface using gestures and spoken commands.
A version for Windows was released in 2012 and we feel that Kinect for Windows offers real possibilities in the areas of engagement and creativity for our pupils.
We originally bought the Xbox 360 with Kinect only to find that the commercial games available were unsuitable for our pupil profile. Still believing in the huge potential of the Kinect for our setting we researched further and to our delight we have found several people who have developed applications suitable for our pupils. We have are in the process of trying out these applications and have had really interesting results.
Little Angels School is part of a small, but ever expanding, group of schools which are trialing the use of Kinect in a Special School setting. More information on what has emerged so far can be found on this wiki.
