Tero Toivanen's Page

Hey,

Thanks for link :-)

Hi Tero,

Many thanks for that link.

One of my best friends was from Finland. If you need some SMARTBoard resources, check out http://smartboardrevolution.ning.com/

Hi Tero,

You wanted to know what kind of results I had from autistic children. I only made the games and saw to it that other games worked properly before donating them to the special school.

However I can easily get this information for you. At university today and the professor who involved me in the project is closely liked with the special needs school as her daughter is autistic and attends this school. Apparently it seems to be all positive as game donations is on-going. I think they donate to other schools as well. I will get back to you later evening if not definitely on Monday.

I would like to get more information about the smart board, this would be very helpful to me. I was told there are clock games that can be used to tell time on smart board. Have you ever used it before? If so how effective do you find it? Is this a separate application for the board?

Hi Tero,

Thank you for that wealth of information!
About the multimedia games for children with autism. I did this while studying a multimedia module. We were given a case study, each child assigned to you varied on the autistic scale. Case study included their medical condition (e.g whether they had fine and gross motor coordination etc), age, gender, likes and dislikes (e.g whether they did not like loud noises, trains, balls etc), favorite colour etc, etc.

This information enabled me to design especially for that child. E.g. got a case where a boy was obsessed with British garden birds, so I made the buttons on the game in form of a bird. He was also unable to decipher emotions, he could not tell if a person was angry or sad. So one game I made on the CD was aimed to show him angry, happy, sad face etc; because he liked bird I used animated faces of birds. I think I remembered putting about three games on the CD including a math game. He did not like loud noises did not place any loud noises like ringing or clapping if the child got the answer correct. Things like this.

I further went on to do some voluntary work, in checking games designed by 1st year university students of Dubai and China. All case studies were real children and games were donated as charity to them.
Games were made with macromedia software called 'Director'

Think this is more or less about it with me and children with special needs. I was also employed at one time as a PORTAGE Secretary for an organization providing services for children of special needs.

Hello Tero,

I have an interest in the smart board and have never used it before,however I have seen it in demonstration. Can you tell me what benefits there are from using a smart board?
I am currently doing my MSc in Interaction Design. I would like to eventually design tools or improve applications to make learning in the classroom more interesting. Like you I am interested in learning theories because when designing applications I must cater different learning styles.
I see that you teach children with autistic spectrum disorders. I've designed multimedia games at one point for autistic children. Each game was tailored for each individual child their likes and dislikes was considered when designing.

Hi Tero,

Thanks for invite. Do you have any suggestions to my discussions?