Promoting Social Skills in Technology-Mediated Communication Contexts: First Results on Adopting the Social Compass Curriculum

Communication is a vital part of our daily lives. It allows us to express ourselves, our needs and feelings, enabling the establishment of relationships with others. Unfortunately, the ability to communicate can often be partially or, even, fully hindered due to a wide range of conditions. Since communication acts as a crucial step for integration, difficulties associated with communication can act as obstacles to those that experience them, making them struggle to feel included in society. Taking in mind the importance of being able to communicate and the multiple facets of technology, but also other dimensions such as social interaction, and building on previous work regarding assistive communication technologies for school kids, this work addresses the promotion of social skills in technology-mediated contexts. To this end, a tool designed to motivate and promote face to face interaction as well as the employment of the user’s social skills during them, is proposed as an instrument to support and potentially teach and improve the child’s social skills. The proposed approach has already been submitted to first evaluations by end-users and professionals in the field of speech therapy with very promising results.