Having regular volunteering work at church, students with SEN are not something new for me. Chatting with them, grabbing things for them, playing games with them. I never imagine what else I can do for them, to improve their behaviors, not just the external environment. SIGHT has given me not only the opportunity to help these kids directly, but also the inspiration that we can look for changes anywhere.
I always thought special schools have similar structure and design with mainstream schools, but when I first entered Caritas Lok Kan School, I was amazed by all the detailed integration of barrier-free facilities into their campus, and customised toys and equipment for body training, which are not commonly available in public. After the visit, our team set edutainment with body training as our project direction, and this is how CollaBox 盒。作started.
“CollaBox” comes from “Collaboration” and “Box”, while “盒。作” can implies “ 盒的作品” (Crafted box) and “合作” (Collaboration). Both the Chinese and English names highlight two elements, collaboration and box. Our team designed a multiplayer computer game that requires more than one student to complete, which is being played with our self-designed game controller. We figure out students lack communication and interaction at school, which is understandable as different physical barriers have limited their movement. Most of their communications are done with teachers or caretakers only. We hope to raise their awareness of the external environment, which is other students’ presence and actions, with CollaBox. So, in our game design, we have created numerous stages which students can proceed to only when they have completed the collaboration game in each stage. The Box, which consists of a joystick and button, is designed to train students’ grasping ability and movement.
Not every student in Caritas has a long attention span and motivation for class, which prompts us to include two more elements in CollaBox, animations and a reward system. As the school is located in Tin Shui Wai and students are often brought around the area, we set the game theme as going to school from the light rail transit station. Not being familiar with the district, me and my partner picked a date to visit the district in-depth to get inspiration and reference for the animations. Octopus cards, light rail trains, items which students are frequently exposed to are included in the animations and graphics. But here came the challenge, I had only a little basic knowledge on animation and graphic design, neither did I have good artistics sense. I started watching tutorial videos online to learn more about the animating skills, and frequently went to my teammates for comments. Luckily, my teammates were very supportive and gave me interesting directions to improve the animations. I can’t say I am a pro at animations now, but at least I have got the skills :P (This is also one of the things I like about SIGHT, you have to step out of your comfort zone always, but not alone!).
Apart from animations, rewards are needed to keep students engaged and motivated throughout the whole game. As humans, we all want to be recognised for our achievements, so as the students. In CollaBox, physical toy trains and rails are continuously provided to students when they proceed to different stages. At the end, a complete route would be built. Originally we tried to build our own train rails using materials available in the lab like cardboard, acrylic board or wood board, but it was much harder than we expected. Some materials were too hard to be cut through, some were not safe, some could be torn easily. Nothing works better than already- available toys out there, which is also our final solution. However, it was fun when everyone came together and tried out different materials for the toy.
Although with the pandemic, our team cannot go into the school to implement CollaBox in person, the whole project experience is very rewarding for us, and hopefully for the students too. We are all trying to make changes to the SEN students’ habits, to make them more adaptable to the external environment, not only making the environment more adaptable for them.
