At this year’s Tech Museum Awards, presented by Applied Materials at The Tech, NASA’s MathTrax team was one of five carefully selected 2007 Microsoft Education Award Laureates. The team, including Robert Shelton, Terry Hodgson and Stephanie Smith, designed tecnology to teach abstract mathematical concepts to blind and visually impaired students, opening up careers in science and technology to students who have traditionally been excluded by virtue of the predominantly visual representations used in those subjects.

MathTrax includes software that allows students to graph equations, interact with the data and understand it through text, tones and spoken language. In addition to removing barriers for the visually impaired, the software can deepen mathematical understanding for all styles of learners.

The team was on hand to speak with PodTech for this video podcast.

The Tech Awards: full coverage

Tags: blind, mathematical concepts, MathTrax, Robert Shelton, Stephanie Smith, Tech Museum Awards, Terry Hodgson, visually impaired
 
Posted in: Connected Social Media, Tech Conferences and Events, Tech Museum Awards