{"id":25675,"date":"2018-08-02T08:44:05","date_gmt":"2018-08-02T12:44:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/college.unc.edu\/?p=25675"},"modified":"2024-07-02T16:56:02","modified_gmt":"2024-07-02T16:56:02","slug":"well-said-computer-science-magic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/?p=25675","title":{"rendered":"Well Said: computer science magic"},"content":{"rendered":"

Professor Gary Bishop was doing virtual reality before it was cool. Now he uses his computer science background to create books for children with visual impairments and developmental disabilities.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Gary
Gary Bishop watches as Maze Day participants arrive at the department of computer science. (photo courtesy of UNC-Chapel Hill)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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On this episode of Well Said, we hear from computer science professor Gary Bishop, who discusses\u00a0how he uses computer science magic and how he found that magic here in Chapel Hill.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Listen to the podcast.<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Transcript<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"ScreenBishop:<\/strong>One of the talks I give to incoming students is about computer science being magic. I can think about something. I can sit in my office and quietly type, and I can make the world better for kids all over the place.<\/p>\n

Host:<\/strong>Hey, everybody, and welcome to Well Said. This is Carolina\u2019s storytelling podcast. Each week we tell how the fundamental innovation here at Carolina allows faculty, staff and students to have an impact on campus and around the world.<\/p>\n

Host:<\/strong>On today\u2019s episode, we talk with computer science professor Gary Bishop. That\u2019s who you heard at the top of the show. We\u2019re going to learn how he uses computer science magic and how he found that magic here in Chapel Hill.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Host:<\/strong>Gary Bishop got his doctorate from Carolina in 1984, and he joined the computer science faculty in 1991. Back then, his research focused on things like 3D graphics, motion tracking and virtual environments.<\/p>\n

Bishop:<\/strong>We were doing virtual reality way before it was cool, O.K.? I mean way before it was cool, we were doing virtual reality.<\/p>\n

Host:<\/strong>But he wasn\u2019t very satisfied with the work he was doing. Its impact always seemed too far away.<\/p>\n

Bishop:<\/strong>We were always saying things, \u201cIn the future, physicians may use this technology for X, Y, Z,\u201d but it was always way off in the future.<\/p>\n

Host:<\/strong>Bishop was looking for ways he could help people right now. People he felt were often ignored. One day, Bishop went for a walk on campus. He was looking for a way forward to what he felt would be more impactful, more rewarding research.<\/p>\n

Bishop:<\/strong>I\u2019m out walking on campus, and here comes this guy the other way.<\/p>\n

Host:<\/strong>That guy was a blind man with a guide dog. Bishop wanted to stop him but didn\u2019t want to come off rude, so he passed him by.<\/p>\n

Bishop:<\/strong>And he stops and says, \u201cCould you tell me what street I\u2019m on?\u201d And I said, \u201cYou\u2019re not on a street. You\u2019re on the sidewalk behind South Building.\u201d He says, \u201cAh, the dog turned at the wrong place.\u201d I say, \u201cWell, can I help you get where you\u2019re going?\u201d<\/p>\n

Host:<\/strong>Bishop and Jason, the guy with the guide dog, had a conversation. After that meeting, Bishop guided four students in building an audio map of Britain under Roman rule that Jason could move around, hear what was nearby and think about the relationships between things. Jason, a doctoral student in the classics, was able to write a research paper based on what he learned from that map. And Bishop found what he was looking for.<\/p>\n

Bishop:<\/strong>And one of those students told me, \u201cThis is the first thing I\u2019ve worked on in college that mattered,\u201d and I thought, \u201cWow! This is O.K.\u201d<\/p>\n

Host:<\/strong>He started teaching a special topics course about enabling technology.<\/p>\n

Bishop:<\/strong>I think of it as technology to enable people with disabilities to do things they couldn\u2019t otherwise do. We\u2019re enabling children to learn, to play, to communicate, those kinds of things.<\/p>\n

Host:<\/strong>The kids that Bishop wants to enable vary a lot. They might have visual or hearing impairments. And some are intellectually or developmentally disabled. Bishop and his students have helped kids all over the with world in different ways. Hark the Sound is a simple game for blind kids. He shipped CDs of that game worldwide.<\/p>\n

Bishop:<\/strong>I have braille letters in my office from India asking for copies of this CD to use in their blind classroom.<\/p>\n

Host:<\/strong>There\u2019s also Maze Day, a field trip designed for visually impaired students. Bishop\u2019s computer science students create games, mazes and experiences specifically for them.<\/p>\n

Bishop:<\/strong>They go on the field trip with the other kids, but they\u2019re like the caboose. What\u2019s at the zoo for a blind kid? Some stuff, but it\u2019s not the same kind of experience that a sighted kid has. Maze Day is for them. The teachers tell me in the fall when they come back to school, they\u2019re talking about Maze Day.<\/p>\n

Host:<\/strong>And then there\u2019s Tar Heel Reader.<\/p>\n

Bishop:<\/strong>Tar Heel Reader is a website. It\u2019s a collection of easy-to-read, accessible books.<\/p>\n

Host:<\/strong>Bishop and students designed an interface with the image hosting site Flickr, so people could search for pictures and add words to them. Make it easy for people to write a book. The idea for Tar Heel Reader came from a discussion about 10 years ago with Karen Erickson, a faculty member in the UNC School of Medicine. They talked about the lack of books developmentally disabled kids have.<\/p>\n

Bishop:<\/strong>A typical first grader has access to a thousand books I\u2019m told, and the typical disabled kid had access to none.<\/p>\n

Host:<\/strong>Using Flickr\u2019s application programming interface, or API, Bishop built a prototype for Tar Heel Reader in about three days.<\/p>\n

Bishop:<\/strong>And so it was pretty crinky, but you could search for pictures and find them, and then you could write a little text for each picture.<\/p>\n

Host:<\/strong>He sent an email to Karen Erickson about the prototype, and she and her students wrote a few books later that night. Then word of the site got out.<\/p>\n

Bishop:<\/strong>People are coming from all over, and it\u2019s not really ready for that because it\u2019s just a prototype, but here they come, and I\u2019m furiously working on it.<\/p>\n

Host:<\/strong>Since then, Bishop and some of his students have refined the site. But people are still coming from all over the world.<\/p>\n

Bishop:<\/strong>People all over the world create books in 20-something languages now. Over 11 million books read 11.7 now I think million books read all over the world \u2014 literally all over the world.<\/p>\n

Host:<\/strong>These books on Tar Heel Reader are designed for a beginner. They\u2019re meant for a developmentally disabled kid who\u2019s just learning how to read. And they\u2019re designed to give that disabled kid access to something he or she might not have.<\/p>\n

Bishop:<\/strong>You\u2019re 12. They\u2019ve just figured out that you could learn to read, so now what you need are those books that most kids get when they\u2019re 3 with the big picture and a few words, but nobody publishes those books for 12-year-olds, and if all you\u2019ve got for me to read are fuzzy farm animals, maybe I don\u2019t want to learn to read.<\/p>\n

Host:<\/strong>Now, thanks to Tar Heel Reader, that disabled kid who\u2019s beginning to read has access to more and more books. Many of these books have a surprising subject \u2014 ceiling fans.<\/p>\n

Bishop:\u00a0<\/strong>You could\u2019ve given me a long time to write books, and I wouldn\u2019t have thought of writing books about ceiling fans, but it turns out that lots of kids with autism think ceiling fans are the most interesting thing in the world, and so teachers out there know this, and so they write books about ceiling fans, and then their kid with autism is excited to read that book because ceiling fans are super interesting to me, so you can create the content that suits the child.<\/p>\n

Host:<\/strong>Whether that content is a game, an interactive activity or something else that he and his students design, Bishop says it\u2019s way more than that.<\/p>\n

Bishop:<\/strong>It\u2019s an opportunity to free a kid from some kind of very strange prison. Kids get opportunities that they wouldn\u2019t have. There are tons of kids who get taken to school in the morning and sit there, and then they get taken home in the afternoon, and we\u2019ve got to convince people that these kids could learn, could read, could write, could communicate, could contribute in interesting ways. Raising the bar is a way to alert people that I\u2019m smarter than you think I am.<\/p>\n

Host:<\/strong>And while giving visually impaired, developmentally disabled or other kids a chance, he\u2019s also giving his own students the opportunity for their work to make a difference right away.<\/p>\n

Bishop:<\/strong>We\u2019re giving kids a way to use their skills that obviously matters. You know, you do your homework, you turn in your assignments, but did it matter? Here was something that actually mattered.You can think, type and make the world a bit better. That\u2019s amazing power.<\/p>\n

Host:<\/strong>For Bishop, using this power to improve the lives of kids all over the world is extremely rewarding.<\/p>\n

Bishop:\u00a0<\/strong>This is the most important work I\u2019ve done in my life. I\u2019ve got patents and papers and all those things. This is the most important work I\u2019ve done. No question. It\u2019s pretty simple stuff. It\u2019s not rocket science, but it needed to be done.<\/p>\n

Host:<\/strong>You can learn more about Maze Day in a story about the 14th annual event that happened this past May. That\u2019s at UNC.edu.<\/p>\n

Host:<\/strong>And to write your own picture book for Tar Heel Reader or to just check it out yourself, go to TarHeelReader.org.<\/p>\n

Host:<\/strong>Have a great story idea for Well Said, or would you like to just let us know what you think of the show? We\u2019d love to hear it \u00a0on Twitter at UNC. Thanks for listening.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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