G Compris: A software for specially-abled child

KOCHI:  The parents of  specially-abled children can now heave a sigh of relief. In what could be called as a highly-innovative approach through the cyber platform, a Thiruvananthapuram-based free software group, has come up with a collaborative tool - ‘G Compris’ - which can improve the holistic development of  specially-abled children.“G Compris is basically a free and open source based software, which is an educational tool for the children. We could successfully extract another innovative use of the tool. We have found that it can be adapted a bit more to support the development of cognitive and motor skills of the autistic and specially-abled children,” said Arun M of the Society of Promotion of Alternate Computing and Employment.  It has been pointed out that computer-based education for training and development of autistic children has already been accepted. “Use of G compris for the same may be an innovation. This program allows them to gain social skills and develop communicative ability,” officials said.The Kerala State IT Mission with the support of SPACE has been implementing a programme called ‘Insight’ to bring the benefits of ICT to mentally-challenged students. The tool G Compris is available as part of this mission. Already SPACE has begun making use of the tool for the development of differently-abled children.  “We have been using the tool G Compris, developed by a French team under Bruno Coudoin, for the Insight programme.  “Based on the feedback that we received from implementing the tool for specially-abled children, we prepared a handbook called ‘Breaking free’.”  The handbook speaks in detail about how the tool can be used, the method of  implementation and the  time frame. The manual further says how the educational tool can be effectively used for the autistic children,” said James P Mathew, project coordinator, Insight.  He also pointed out that the software could be used for similar purposes by other institutions for which Insight would provide free technical assistance. Although it is a free and open source  software, the same tool has been made for Windows  platform also.  As part of the Insight programme 44 differently-abled students are taught using the tool.