31 January, 2012 - 5:19 pm by Louise Collins About 1 mins to read
A scheme, still in its early stages, in a school in Japan has hoped that the low-cost Nintendo DSi, which contains both a microphone and a camera, will soon become a classroom staple. The devices are being used to store lesson notes and offer interactive learning experiences for those who are hard of hearing.
Japanese classrooms have begun using DSi consoles to aid hearing impaired children to understand lessons without the need to lip read or have sign language interpretation. Software converts the teachers’ voice to text, which is then stored in a cloud and streamed to various devices, including DSi consoles.
Yesterday, a similar pilot scheme came to light as part of Microsoft’s Imagine Cup, in which teams from around the world competed to find technological solutions to global problems. One of the four grand prize teams, Ecuador’s Team Falcon, developed a system which interprets voice data and translates it to on-screen sign language in order to assist hearing impaired children.
