HR4RS stamp
The Blue Thinking project of the Rey Juan Carlos University, in collaboration with the Association encourages, has been one of the selected proposals from the Orange Foundation's 'Digital solutions for autism' call for projects. This project will consist of the development of a cognitively accessible app that allows people with ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder) to learn the programming language and strengthen executive functions. "This tool will allow the performance of different tasks, scalable in complexity, allowing different components of these functions to be exercised, such as joint decision-making or improvement of inhibition and self-regulation skills," says Estefanía Martín, a researcher with the LITE group (Laboratorio de Information Technologies in Education) of the URJC.
In this sense, the new application is intended to strengthen planning, monitoring and problem solving functions. Likewise, a pedagogical guide for use will be drawn up that covers objectives linked to the development of social skills.
The app will be aimed at children and adolescents with or without autism from 6 to 16 years old, so that it can become an inclusive resource for schools and institutes that incorporate programming subjects in their curricula. "The purpose of Blue Thinking is that this app serves to stimulate creative thinking in people with ASD and we hope that it will be an effective, current and motivating tool that contributes to improving their quality of life from the use of technologies", he points out. the URJC researcher.
Executive functions and computational thinking
Programming is closely linked to computational thinking, a higher-order cognitive ability that allows problem solving through abstraction, analysis and logical decomposition. It is currently a fundamental analytical skill for anyone, given the influence that computing has on all scientific and productive areas.
The similarities and relationships between computational thinking and executive functions are evident, in addition to the advantage of using visual elements that constitute a natural support for people with ASD.
Orange Foundation 'Digital Solutions for Autism'
This call It is intended for Spanish entities and national projects and its purpose is to support new technological, creative and innovative solutions that offer a pragmatic response to the needs of people with autism and their environment (families, professionals, etc.) , improving their social integration and their quality of life.
On this occasion, two projects have been selected, which will shortly begin their development phase. On the one hand, the Blue Thinking proposal, presented by the Rey Juan Carlos University and the Alenta Association, and on the other, the Lancelot project, an initiative presented by the U-TAD (University Center for Technology and Digital Art) and the Pauta Association.
The Orange Foundation has announced the resolution of the call within the framework of the ITASD Congress 2017, held in Valencia from June 30 to July 2, and in which more than 500 people from 20 different countries have participated.