Asheville School

Asheville School’s Computer Science students use their programming skills to adapt computer games for special needs kids at Hall Fletcher Elementary School. The students designed prototypes of controls for certain computer games and let the special needs studetns try them out in the classroom.

“I have worked with special needs kids before, but this is a cool twist on how I work with them,” said Otto Putzrath, a senior at Asheville School. “It’s a rewarding experience seeing them so happy.”

Kelly Blount, an intensive intervention teacher of children with exceptional needs at Hall Fletcher, said she was amazed at how the Asheville School students were able to use technology to help her kids in her class become more independent.

The Asheville School student teams were each supplied with a $40 MakeyMakey device, which allowed them to design controls that would be easy for the special needs children to use.  In some cases, the students were using the $40 devices to help design specialized buttons that typically cost schools $300 or more.