{"id":8095,"date":"2014-06-04T15:47:53","date_gmt":"2014-06-04T20:47:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/college.unc.edu\/?p=8095"},"modified":"2024-07-02T14:38:48","modified_gmt":"2024-07-02T14:38:48","slug":"mazeday14","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/?p=8095","title":{"rendered":"For Bishop, Maze Day means \u2018doing something that matters\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"ast-oembed-container \" style=\"height: 100%;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"An a-MAZE-ing Day\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/ZuMTdQrbUNU?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p>Kevin Currin remembers the fun he had when he attended Maze Day as a participant when he was in middle school.<\/p>\n<p>Currin never forgot Gary Bishop, the computer science professor who came up with the idea of a special day of fun on campus for visually impaired children and had his students develop sound-based computer games for them to play.<\/p>\n<p>Now a student at Carolina pursuing a career in computational biology, Currin was again on hand for the 10th annual Maze Day \u2013 not as a participant \u2013 but as one of Bishop\u2019s students who designed a maze.<\/p>\n<p>One of the first classes Currin took at Carolina was Bishop\u2019s \u201cIntroduction to Scientific Programming.\u201d He did so well in the class that he joined the growing legion of students past and present who each year turn Sitterson Hall into a virtual carnival for more than 100 visually impaired and blind children from across the state.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cKevin has a station next to his laptop with his computer game where he will talk to these guys about going to college,\u201d Bishop said. \u201cThe laptop he is using is horribly broken. It looks like something you would see in \u2018The Matrix\u2019 \u2013 with a screen blinking freakishly.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Currin explained: \u201cI closed my screen on my headphones once and you can see the headphone splotches there.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Or so he has been told.<\/p>\n<p>Bishop also gave Currin a special assignment: to talk to the kids who come to play his game about how they, too, could go to college.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_8099\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-8099\" style=\"width: 300px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/21\/2024\/07\/Bishop_Garymaze_day_14_100-scaled.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-8099\" alt=\"Gary Bishop, right, with long-time Maze Day participant Bobby Ryals. (photo by Dan Sears) \" src=\"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/21\/2024\/07\/Bishop_Garymaze_day_14_100-scaled.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"204\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-8099\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Gary Bishop, right, with long-time Maze Day participant Bobby Ryals. (photo by Dan Sears)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>The idea for Maze Day was spawned in 2001 when Bishop met Jason Morris, a blind graduate student in classics who told him about the Ancient World Mapping Center in Davis Library and how people there wanted to figure out a way to produce maps for the visually impaired.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI put five of my undergraduate students on doing that,\u201d Bishop said. Using a system called BATS (Blind Audio Tactile Mapping System), the students developed a map of Britain under Roman rule that Morris became the first to use.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAfterward, they told me, \u2018This was the first thing I did in college that mattered,\u2019\u201d Bishop said. And that was the professor\u2019s eureka moment, when he realized that he and his students could become \u201cgeeks for good.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Through Morris, Bishop met Diane Brauner, a certified orientation and mobility specialist, who told him about blind children in elementary school being left behind when the class went to computer labs because there was no software that made the computers accessible to them. And together, they hatched the idea of Maze Day.<\/p>\n<p>That first year, 2005, Bishop developed a game he called Hark the Sound, a collection of sound-based computer games that allowed visually impaired children to identify songs and animal sounds. Using cardboard, students also developed an actual maze for students to navigate, a practice that has continued every year since.<\/p>\n<p>Two children who participated that first year \u2013 10th-grader Bobby Ryals and 9th-grader Brooklyn Geise \u2013 have attended Maze Days faithfully ever since, except the year \u201cthe bus didn\u2019t show up,\u201d Ryals said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI definitely appreciate it,\u201d he said. \u201cYou can tell with every game we play how much work they put into it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Geise said one of the things she likes about Maze Day is the friendships she has made with students over the years.<\/p>\n<p>Both Ryals and Geise said they intend to go to college.<\/p>\n<p>Maze Day was conceived as a day of fun for visually impaired kids, Bishop said, and while the games may have become more complex, that simple idea has stayed basically the same.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI tell my students you can write a game that is more fun than nothing,\u201d Bishop said. \u201cOK, these kids have nothing. We can do something more for them than that.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Like Ryals and Geise, many students come back year after year.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe have teachers tell us that this is the first time I\u2019ve seen this kid smile,\u201d Bishop said. \u201cThey get to go on class field trips, but they are kind of the caboose. This is their field trip. So they come and have a good time.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>As Ryals explained, \u201cIt\u2019s a lot better than going to the zoo.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><em>Story by Gary Moss, University Gazette; video by Beth Lawrence &#8217;12<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Every spring UNC&#8217;s department of computer science hosts Maze Day, an event for visually impaired students of all ages from across North Carolina and beyond. 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