Yourself
"Imagine a world where technology enables a better education for all". This is the starting point of Yourself: the challenge that let us think a solution to deeply understand people needs, feelings, problems, and also characteristics and aptitudes. Yourself tries to discover how you really are in order to know how to react. To do this, it exploits graphology.
Yourself: the project
AbstractEducation comprises an ensemble of factors, ranging from one’s own personal experiences to the influences transmitted by our parents, the mass media, and environment in which we are raised and with which we are in contact on a daily basis. Everything which surrounds us can, in fact, be perceived in one manner or another or not be understood at all, depending on each individual’s personality and characteristics. The greatest difficulty for parents and teachers, without having to inevitably resort to the assistance of professionals who may be economically unapproachable, is to rapidly understand the personality, characteristics, capacity to reason, and aptitudes of their children.
How can we achieve all of this quickly?
YourSelf provides a solution to this problem by analyzing students’ handwriting.
All of us when reading a text focus our attention on the message it offers, its content, or, through the eyes of a teacher, on its grammatical aspects and descriptive form. YourSelf takes handwriting to a higher level: it doesn’t analyze what is written so much as how it is written. When we put pen to paper, we don’t just communicate the contents of what we are writing, but we are actually making an impression on the page of our own personality with its specific character traits, strengths and weaknesses. All of this can easily be obtained by analyzing handwriting characteristics, according to a science called graphology.
We can therefore analyze the peculiarities of each student, his/her potential and aptitudes, as well as understanding the deep motivations that may be at the root of learning difficulties.Based on an analysis of a student’s handwriting and its evolution over time (profile), teachers can effectively evaluate students much more clearly. In this way, students can be assisted in a personalized manner, properly understood and assisted in surmounting their difficulties.
Moreover, YourSelf can be used to diagnose and comprehend the causes of problems which can arise in learning situations, such as Specific Learning Disturbances (dyslexia, dysgraphia, dyscalculia and dysorthographia), providing assistance in preventing such occurrences while accelerating their correction. It is also possible to understand and analyze a student’s ability to communicate, perceiving whether there may be problems related to socialization and integration. Analyses of this sort can assist in preventing phenomena such as bullishness or help students who are experiencing difficulties in accepting others or integrating within a group.
Thanks to YourSelf, students are in fact stimulated and aided in overcoming their learning difficulties, becoming acquainted with their own potential and weak points, while being allowed to discover their aptitudes and characteristics. The program therefore provides an important support in helping them decide their future.
Specifications in detail
To improve the quality of education, YourSelf keeps track of students during their entire course of studies, from infancy and pre-school years through to the attainment of their secondary school diploma. Based on the scholastic phase that an individual student is undergoing, YourSelf’s approach is to create a so-called storyboard, which provides easy access to the student’s personal and scholastic growth, making use of as much data as possible. This, in turn, makes it easy for teachers and family alike to evaluate the student’s progress, his/her potential, while perceiving any problem issues and establishing causes, with the aim of resolving learning difficulties, in addition to comprehending and making the most of the student’s hidden potential.
As illustrated in the figure above, the storyboard basically contains the student’s entire educational course, which can be divided into 4 main phases:
Infancy, in which an analysis of colors, forms and gestures present in drawings can provide a useful method of understanding the characteristics of each individual child. Through drawings, gestures and colors, children express all the uncertainties, fears and problems they face. (Not yet implemented)
In the 6 to 9 years age group,
where the aim is to diagnose so-called Specific Learning Disturbances. These disturbances deal with various specific disabilities that can hinder complete self-sufficiency, such as Dyslexia, Dysgraphia, Dysorthographia and Dyscalculia. It is very difficult to perceive a predisposition to one of these disturbances in advance, but it is just as simple to cure them in time if they are diagnosed rapidly.
In the 10 to 14 years age group, educators must concentrate more on students’ interpersonal relationships with
their friends, on their emotional characteristics and possible aggressive behavior, thereby inevitably intersecting another very delicate issue in today’s school system: bullishness. A rough graphological analysis developed by YourSelf will, in effect, provide in-depth knowledge about a student’s main character traits: exuberance, temperament, weaknesses, and fragility. It is also possible to grasp whether a child is having problems integrating within a group, as well as all characteristics linked to communicativeness, integration and socialization.
Finally, YourSelf can also be usefully applied for the age group ranging from the latter years of middle school to secondary school. YourSelf provides a key to
understanding the problems and characteristics of each student, placing educators in a position to help each student in the best way possible. Thanks to YourSelf, problems linked to temperament and behavior can be diagnosed before they culminate in personal and family tragedies. We need only mention cases such as anorexia, bulimia, and, generally speaking, all food-related disturbances, or more tragically, cases of juvenile suicide. What’s more, YourSelf is a useful means of comprehending a student’s aptitudes.
In essence, what YourSelf offers is the possibility of bringing a student’s parents and, above all, his/her teachers into an emphatic relationship with him/her. This is, in fact, the best therapy, enabling the student to be supported and aided in the most effective manner possible: an ad hoc, personalized support. This is the key that YourSelf provides towards a better quality of learning.
Yourself: the team
Team: Carlo Alberto Boano, 22 years old, Politecnico di Torino: Team leader and responsible of paper work, algorithms' creation and tablet pc development; Alessandro Cartura, 23 years old, Politecnico di Torino: UI-design and graphics; Melissa Veglio, 19 years old, Liceo Scientifico Curie in Pinerolo. Davide Benato, 24 years old, Politecnico di Torino.
Yourself at Microsoft Imagine Cup 2007 in Seoul
Yourself has been selected as project responsible to represent Italy
at the worldwide finals of the Microsoft Imagine Cup 2007 Software Design competition, after having won the italian finals in Trieste
during june 2007. The worldwide finals have been taking place in South Korea from 5 to 11 august 2007 at Sheraton Grande Walkerhill hotel in Seoul.
Between Seoul's skycrapes and in this magnificient and friendly environment, 55 teams from different countries were competing for the final prize of 25,000 $.
Italy was represented by Yourself, that was randomly added to pool D, together with Brazil, Pakistan, Belgium, South Africa, Saudi Arabia, Ireland, Hungary, Netherlands.
Victory went to Team Thailand and their project LiveBook. See more at www.imaginecup.com.
Here some pictures from both Trieste (italian finals) and Seoul (worldwide finals):
Yourself - credits
Video contents:Yourself spot video;
Italian TV News (Rai3) of 15/08/2007;
Radio interview at GRP of 23/07/2007;
The Imagine Cup 2007 Italian finals official videoclip (from the Microsoft Imagine Cup official page);
Yourself presentation at Imagine Cup 2007 (under construction);
Image contents:
Yourself screenshots;
Web contents:
La Stampa del 11/06/2007;
La Stampa del 10/08/2007;
Il Corriere della Sera del 09/08/2007;
Il Corriere della Sera del 10/08/2007;
Il Corriere della Sera del 10/08/2007;
Il Corriere della Sera del 10/08/2007;
La Repubblica del 30/06/2007;
Comunicato stampa Microsoft del 10/06/2007;
Comunicato stampa Microsoft del 10/08/2007;
Microsoft - casi di successo;
Studio Legale Lagreca;
Musicalia.it;
AreaPress.it;
PuntoInformatico.it;
Newsletter Libero dell'11/08/2007, 3° pagina;
Rizzoli-tech.it;
Il giornale dell'ingegnere del 15/07/2007;
Yourself - credits
Team developers: Carlo Alberto Boano; Alessandro Cartura; Davide Benato; Melissa Veglio.Idea:
Carlo Alberto Boano.
Special thanks: Anna Alasia; Giorgio Sardo; Emanuele Arpini; Microsoft Italia and Academic Club; Stefano Santoro, Marco Bodoira and all people who helped us.