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ProjectProposal

University of Massachusetts at Lowell

Assistive Technology Design Fair 2009

Project Proposal

Date: March 5, 2008

School Name: TEAMS Academy

Team Members: Erin Tibbetts (Tewksbury High), Ryan Schnepper (Littleton High)

Team Advisors: Janna Thomas, Don Rhine, Bill Harmon (978) 934-4613

Statement of Need: Our client needs to be able to complete her homework with less help and less stress.

Background: Mrs.D’s daughter was born with all of the internal workings of her ear but the outside parts of her ear and ear canal are not there. She can only hear out of one of her ears and so she was added into the inclusion class in her school. Her doctor suggested getting speakers for the classroom. This has made class a little easier, but by the time she arrives home, she is exhausted.

She also has a learning disorder that has not been identified yet. Her mother believes that she has dyslexia because she often reverses the order of letters when she pronounces words. She is easily frustrated by homework and needs a lot of help, which is provided by her mom. She also has memory problems which makes it harder to learn vocab.

We hope to build a product that will help her learn her spelling words more easily and with less frustration. We hope that this will help her become more independent.

Design Requirements/Constraints:

• The product has to be safe for the client to use.

• The product must be completed in our time frame.

• Costs must be under $150.

• The final product has to appeal to the child.

• The product must be easy to use.

• She needs to be able to hear it easily.

• Power Source

• Should be easy to move for transportation.

• Durability

• Usable for easy and complex spelling words.

• Product should be fun and stress free for our client.

Technology that already exists could be branched off of. For people such as our client, useful technology would include: word processors, reading systems, phonetic spelling, and speech recognition. All of the above technologies have been modified to help people with dyslexia. Since our client has problems remembering vocabulary words, we will most likely look into reading systems and phonetic spelling technologies. In these fields, we could create or modify something that fits our clients need.

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