JMSS Event - Designing Inclusive Features
Tuesday, 24th of October 2023
9:00am - 3:00pm
Workshopping with John Monash Science School
A sea of navy washes around the room in Woodside as another cohort of 40 JMSS students huddle onto their tables.
MATT are welcoming students from Doherty House into an Assistive Technology Maker Workshop hosted by Dr. Swamy Ananthanarayan, Lecturer in Human-Centred Computing.
He begins the workshop with an explanation of the work conducted by MATT and Monash’s researchers in Inclusive Technologies:
A disability can be a lot of things,” he says. “If you make something inclusive, you’re really designing something for everyone.”
The work of Monash’s Inclusive Technologies group focuses on the use of technology in enhancing opportunities for people living with disabilities throughout their lives.
A day of immersion, learning and hands-on workshopping is underway for JMSS students, and MATT members are there to help them learn to build and develop assistive devices.
Using a combination of MATT’s in-house 3D-printed wearables and BBC Micro:bit kits, students experiment with components in groups and pitch their device ideas to their peers.
Chris, Environmental Science and Geography teacher at JMSS, explained that days like this help students “to see where their pathways at Monash could take them.”
One team pitches and demonstrates ‘Crysis’—a wearable device for hard-of hearing parents that “detects the cry of babies, and it helps parents who are deaf to know when their child needs their attention.
Every student gets the chance to engage with technologies that appear simple, but can be of real value to users.
Their teacher, Chris, also remarks that the workshop encourages students to think about “the usage of small scale and large scale tech for the benefit of society.”
How important is experiencing a workshop like this for students at the end of their high-school tenures?
“It’s a good opportunity to display real-life applications of IT instead of making the skills seem abstract,” according to Diana, MATT Committee Member and Relations Lead.
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MATT always enjoys showing students what we do, supporting them in exploring their futures in STEM and working with Monash’s leading researchers in Creative Technologies.