SENAS: A Next Generation Smart City Educational Network for Autistic Students
This pilot project involves creating a Smart City Educational Network for Autistic Students (SENAS) using the Next Generation of Internets.
There are two related initiatives:
- Developing a cyber physical technology based demonstration test bed involving cyber and physical tools to support learning among children with autism. We are using ultra-fast high gigabit networks to help cyber learning activities for autistic students.
- Laying the ground work as a part of a Global Cities Teams Challenge (GCTC) team initiative. The Smart City of the future will depend on a number of technologies. Cyber Physical systems and technologies will play a key role in this realization. Our interest and emphasis is to support city schools and school districts by improving the quality of services provided to children with special needs which can in the long term also reduce the overall costs required to provide such services. Without an emphasis on providing educational services, any Smart City idea is not sustainable. While our initial plan is to work with schools, our long term plan is to also work with Colleges and Universities. Through our smart city initiative, we seek to work with schools, parents, teachers to help students learn from a variety of resources from their homes and from any other location (irrespective of where they are).
Some of our partners are the City of Stillwater, Stillwater Public Schools (Dr. Ann Caine), autism experts (Dr. Mary Sweet-Darter, ABA Technologies), Oklahoma State University and the University of Wisconsin Madison (Dr. P. Ramanathan). Other partners who will be joining us soon include Little Axe Public Schools, Muscogee (Creek) Nation schools, and Broken Arrow Public Schools. Educational partner institutions from inside and outside of Oklahoma who are interested in being part of this initiative can email Dr. Cecil (j.cecil@okstate.edu).
Regarding our work with autistic students, our prior work in use of virtual technologies and ultra fast networks will play a key role in the development of cyber physical tools to support learning for children with special needs.
A view of the VLE to teach density/mass concepts
An autistic student learning using next generation ultra-fast networks