The Life Project Creator (we really need a cool acronym...) is a about helping people to help people!
Sounds great right? We love good catch phrases. So, what we are trying to build here is an online platform that helps social workers, parents, medical caretakers, etc. take care of autistic people.
We are greatful for the question. As some of you may know autistic people have special needs in regard of every day life routines. A pot of coffee, a computer and Github just won't cut it like for us geeks. A strict routine must be put in place so they can evolve in a steady and calm environement. The problem is when you want to learn new stuff by definition it is... well... new. So not in the every day life routine at least not in the beginning.
This raises challenges for the people responsible to teach them those things. The solution is simple actually : planning, planning... and some more planning. You have to lay down a long running plan planned way head so they can prepare them self. This plan is called a Life Project.
But you can't plan a life ahead!
No we can't, a life project is actually planned year by year but still...
In France (yeah, yeah) this planning is mostly done on paper and filed away after completion. They're are no digital trace of the life projects. Except the obvious fact that this is unacceptable for computer scientists it reduces the possibilities greatly for all parties envolved. Just have a look at some the features that are not possible to have without an online platform :
- Immediate notification when changes occure
- An accessible schedule for the autistic people and their guardiens
- Life Project templating based on previous experience
- Easy and guided project editing
- Automatic evaluation of the quality of project
- Learning curves over long time
- Having the autistic people help build their project through adapted tools
- Experience exchanging between institutions even countries
- Being secure from water, rats, bugs, godzilla...
This is far from being a complet list of the possibilities.
The main idea is to help build better projects and give the autistic people more say in it.
Man we need help! As of now this is still a student project at the university but soon we will need contributors to make it a viable reality. We are ambitious and in need of craftsmanship (I would have loved to developped it google style in my garage but there just is no money in this).
So if you love to crunch Java lines, like to play with googly technologies like GWT, App Engine and JDO you are what we are searching for!
But I don't feel so confortable with these tecs...
Don't worry this is an opensource fun project just dive right in. Soon a lot of docs, how to's and todo-lists will be realesed to help whom ever is interested to join us.
You know the drill : Fork, Commit, Pull and help us save those puppies!