Designing Educational Tools, Based on Body Interaction, for Children with Special Needs Who Present Different Motor Skills

New technologies and computer applications prove to be powerful tools for children with special needs in order to improve specific skills. However, there is still a gap between research development and its applicability in schools. Thus, we have created a workgroup with a specialized state school in Spain. Based on their curricular project, we have identified the need for training the body such as working stabilization, coordination and knowledge of the body as well as other educational competences. For that purpose, we propose a framework with three activities: "painting", "discovering an image" and "creating music". Moreover, the Microsoft Kinect has been used since its way of interaction is based on the entire body. In addition, it is important to remember that children of such a school present a great variety of motor and cognitive skills. Consequently, the framework must adapt itself to the child\´s motor capacities. Therefore, we proposed a user\´s profile system which is composed of several interaction techniques for a same action. The framework was installed at the school for 2 months. 3 trained teachers taught 6 children about the use of the framework. During this period of time the user\´s configuration was improved and adjusted. Then, a second evaluation was performed in order to measure the interest and motivation of the children and to validate the flexibility of the framework. Thus, specific objectives and criteria were fixed and the 6 children tried the framework during 3 sessions, one per week. The children showed interest in participating and were willing to follow the instructions given by the teachers. Furthermore, the customization of the interaction techniques allowed almost all the children to play with the system. Moreover, one of them improved the control of his gestures.