Skillbox for Deaf Education - Microsoft Imagine Cup Winners 2011

Last time, there are a group of students from Ecuador took part in the Microsoft Imagine Cup Competition 2011. They designed the SkillBox, which helps Deaf children get to know the sign language when it translated the audio from a teacher in a classroom. What is SkillBox? It is a wireless headset captures the sound, then convert to the translation sign language, then it sends to a computer or laptop.

 The team will get $75,000 to develop the technology using Microsoft products. The four winning teams were announced at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland where Bill Gates met with the team captains. The winners were chosen out of 50 applicants. More information at
http://www.imaginecup.com/blogs/imagine_cup_finals/default.aspx
 




SkillBox main objective is to include the hearing impaired children to a regular educational environment by translating spoken language to sign language. The architecture that we used is modular, giving us the possibility to insert SkillBox in to mobile devices such as Windows Phone, tablets, slates and also in the near future, we want to integrate it into television, cinemas, and more.

SkillBox runs in a small PC like Classmate PC and the user only needs a headset and the PC running Windows 7 with speech recognition. With the requirements of SkillBox are accessible for almost any user that has the option to buy a low-cost computer, and in their research, they found that in their region most hearing impaired people have limited economic resources, or live in rural areas, so SkillBox helps the Deaf children to have better access to education.


Source: Deafnewstoday.com

What are you thinking of the SkillBox project? :)