Inspirational AVS students have eight projects in BT Young Scientists final

STUDENT: Hughie McShane 

CATEGORY: Intermediate Technology 

PROJECT TITLE: An app to improve writing in children with dysgraphia 

APPROACH: My cousin was recently diagnosed with dysgraphia (along with mild dyslexia), and I want to learn more about the condition and do what I can to help, as there are plenty of resources out there for dyslexia, but barely any for dysgraphia. I have been programming in python and c# for many years. In my spare time I develop games and last year I participated in the All Ireland Programming Olympiad and preparation for this really helped to develop my programming knowledge so I want to create a program to help develop writing skills in children with dysgraphia. Since my cousin's diagnosis, I have read widely about dysgraphia and computer based methods of improving writing skills. I found an interesting study (from the Frontiers in Psychiatry journal) on a very similar idea to mine, however, it was concentrated on one child. It involved bringing in a robot which the child has to "teach" to write. The child sees how terribly the robot writes, and begins to feel better about their writing, and learns by teaching the robot over a period of time. I aim to speak to pupils with dysgraphia to gain an insight into the condition so that I can understand the problems that they encounter when they write. This is an important part of the process because if I do not appreciate their difficulty I cannot design an app to help them. I will use C# to write my code to build the app and add in stylus functionality so that children using the app actually develop their writing skills and not typing skills. I then will test the programme with a focus group for problems before testing its functionality, enjoyability and efficacy with a larger test group.