Month: November 2017

www.mathisis-project.eu/en

Rix Research were in Madrid last week for the MaTHiSiS project partner meeting. The meeting of the project’s 18 collaborating organisations from 9 different EU Member States dovetailed with the beginning of an exciting phase of project activity, the start of the ‘Assisted Pilots’.

The Assisted Pilots will see the uniquely innovative prototype MaTHiSiS educational platform piloted in a wide range of settings. Rix Research is coordinating the pilots in London that will look specifically at the use of the MaTHiSiS platform with target groups with PMLD and ASD. We are really excited to discover how this innovative software, which has a unique algorithm that has been developed to work with a camera to capture the ‘affect state’ of the learner and then adjust their learning tasks appropriately, will work with this particular group of learners who can be extremely difficult to read, reach and understand.

By automatically adjusting the skills and levels of learning according to the feelings and emotions captured – for example is the learner happy, frustrated, engaged, motivated – the MaTHiSiS platform has the potential to achieve genuinely personalised learning that is engaging, enabling and truly inclusive.  

The MaTHiSiS educational platform aims to provide every type of learner, in every type of setting, on the device they have at their disposal, with a bespoke, individualised learning experience that is adapted to their personal requirements. This ambitious 3 year project expects to have a version of the platform market ready for commercial exploitation by December 2019.

You can read more about the project and Rix Research here:

www.www.rixinclusiveresearch.org/mathisis

The purpleSTARS advisory group launched a forthcoming project with the Glenside Hospital Museum in Bristol with a kick-off planning session earlier this week. Stella Man, who runs the museum, visited Rix Research & Media at UEL for the meeting, which scoped out how between January and September 2018 the purpleSTARS Archive & Sensory Teams will visit Glenside and train a team of 5 local people with learning disabilities to work with the Rix Wiki software to make a sensory expedition trail of the museum. This work also plans to feature an App that will be made available to Museum visitors.

purpleSTARS brings together a group of artists and technologists with and without learning difficulties/disabilities to transform museum experiences and make them really inclusive. They use sensory and digital media to create alternative interpretations of museum collections.

The purpleSTARS Archive Team are part of the ‘Access All Areas’ theatre group. They have become Wiki experts over the course of working on a number of Rix Research projects, all connected to museums and archiving.

Rix Research are delighted to be working once again with the University of Reading to extend the benefits of the award-winning AHRC funded ‘Sensory Objects’ project, through the 1 year Sensory Objects Enterprise 2017/18 AHRC follow on funding grant. The purpleSTARS enterprise are the start-up enterprise that has been created with the help of this grant. The project with Glenside Hospital Museum is one of the purpleSTARS first archiving and sensory commissions.

Read our account of the purpleSTARS enterprise project HERE, or visit the purpleSTARS or Sensory Objects website for further information, or to commission the purpleSTARS to make a sensory expedition to your museum.

www.puzzle-project.eu

 

After two years of working in partnership with specialist organisations in Greece, Poland, Lithuania and Sweden, 3rd November was officially the final day of the Erasmus + funded Puzzle Project.

Here at Rix Research Prof. Andy Minnion marked the end of the project with by presenting the final outcomes to the wider Rix Team. We learnt about how the project has really interrogated ideas of Easy to Read and looked at how to make information for people with intellectual disabilities more inclusive, especially in the area of improving people with intellectual disabilities understanding of Human Rights and self-advocacy. Read about the outcomes, access the resources and find out more about Human Rights on the Puzzle website.