“I wanted to find a way for these children to play the same games as their peers, and those games are like shooting games, “Tetris,” racing games — games that require a lot of precision and fast decision-making skills, but that is exactly what these children don’t have,” Kim said.
Kim and Gary Bishop, a computer science professor, along with professor Karen Erickson, are developing a website that allows people to create their own video games using YouTube videos.
The program allows users to pause videos at different checkpoints and make commands flash on the screen. With the press of any button, they can fulfill different commands and resume the video. If players make the wrong choice, it’s game over.
“It’s just jumping around in the video, but my experience is that I’m actually playing the game,” Bishop said. “It has the same experience of frustration that I’ve made the wrong choice, and now I have to start over.”
The program was originally designed for children with motor disabilities who could not play the same games as their peers, but when Kim and Bishop spent the summer researching with the UNC School of Medicine’s Center for Literacy and Disability Studies, they realized Tar Heel Gameplay could be used for educational purposes.
“I think there’s a lot we can learn from games,” Kim says. “There are games on money management; there are games on dating; there are games on farming. What these children don’t have the opportunity to do, they can learn from games, which are just simulations of an alternate world.”
Michaela Baker, an occupational therapist in Orange County Schools, said the Exceptional Children program is always searching for new technologies to engage students, but using games like Tar Heel Gameplay in the classroom might become distracting for students.
“Some videos are very alluring to kids and could be fun, but it depends on the student or the class we’re working with,” she said. “There’s a cutoff point where a student may get fixated on that, but it may bring more interest in what’s going on.”
