asjad99 / kineff Goto Github PK

Education sector is yet to realize the full potential of modern technology. For years, teaching has been a difficult profession: finding ways to elucidate concepts in the best possible manner, and also especially for people with physical limitations due to old age or disabilities. There are a lot of people with extraordinary teaching skills, but are hampered by physical limitations due to a disability or the ability to effectively communicate with their students.

Team Aurora’s entry for Microsoft Imagine Cup 2012 revolves around alleviating the world’s problem of Achieving Universal Primary Education, which is one of the millennium development goals. We had been experimenting with Microsoft Kinect’s SDK since the day it was released and developed multiple simple applications to test out its effectiveness and realize the possibilities it offers. When we decided to participate in Microsoft’s Imagine Cup, considering this year’s theme, the issue for education in a developing country like Pakistan deemed most important to us. We researched institutions in our locality and found a series of very pressing issues, which we recognized can be resolved with a mix of software design and utilizing Microsoft Kinect’s natural user interface. Coincidently it was a perfect fit for our cause.

Our software is a suite of applications, designed and developed specially to be used in tandem with Kinect’s NUI (Natural User Interface). The natural gestures allow even a computer novice to reap the benefits of our application wholly.

The applications we have designed are tailor-made to suit the needs of these educators, to augment their teaching needs. Our research indicated that in majority of the schools in Pakistan, students were losing interest in science subjects because they were unable to grasp concepts and a lot of schools lack the lab facilities which are usually in place as an aid to help students grasp these concepts. Our applications allow teachers to explain these concepts using interactive models and simulations, utilizing Kinects NUI in the process and making things very simple for the end user. The applications also allow simulation of real world lab experiments in a virtual environment, making it feasible for these schools to effectively teach students at a cost effective price.

All these things make lives for the teachers easier and their teaching effort more productive, while side by side elevating and maintaining the interest of students at school, which is very important, since one of the prime reasons for such high illiteracy levels is drop-outs due to loss of interest.

KINEFF, short for, The Kinect Effect is a suite of modular applications, fully utilizing Microsoft Kinect's Natural User Interface, to help aid educators at teaching in an ever more effective manner.

KINEFF is a suite of applications which are all integrated to fully function with Kinect's NUI.

KINEFF has been designed keeping in mind that even an average teacher can reap its full benefits all thanks to the Natural User Interface.

These applications are designed to cater to needs of individual subject matter in a very easy to use format. The NUI allows aged and disabled teachers to teach just as a normal person does, bypassing their physical limitations. The use of interactive and eye catching tools will ease the burden on teachers and also help enhance and maintain the interest of students. E.g. Physics, Chem, Maths, Etc. Using virtual environment, we can simulate science labs, enabling students deprived of these features to also gain the benefits of lab experiments.

3D interactive chemistry Chemical Equation builder. Atom structure builder. Complex Molecule Builder Virtual Chem. Lab Fun with Physics Virtual White Board Interactive History Lesson Presenter Math Module

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mTGT6XH7J0

Low cost solutions like ours can solve problems that low budget institutes like Govt. School and College Taxila and others in our country face. NUI is the way forward of interacting with computers. Our application shows various possibilities of gesture based computing in classrooms, which can provide an exciting interactive educational experience.

We aim to achieve the following impact:

• Tackle Difficulty faced by teachers in explaining concepts of scientific subjects to students in an effective manner.
• Maintaining the students interest in science subjects.
• Difficulty faced by old and handicapped teachers at teaching like normal people due physical limitations.
• Low school budgets don't allow them to have labs.