This week we presented our ideas to many adults at the forum. We were extremely successful in showing the adults what we taught the Alzheimer's patients. The adults and teachers we educated about our ideas all thought that our idea was innovative, exciting, and compelling. We showed the adults what games we played with the dementia patients and it was shocking to see the difference. We showed the them some of the easier and more difficult games we played with the patients and they all could do it with ease. We realized how hard a disease like Alzheimer's is to deal with. The patients couldn’t even recognize the difference between a dice and person. Obviously, some of the games we extremely easy for the adults. They couldn’t believe that anybody couldn’t complete a task so easy.
Next week we plan on making a video explaining a project. We will show the many stages of this project. We have been taking pictures throughout the project for this video. We will describe exactly what we did each week in a 3 minutes video. Even though the project is over, we intend to keep going to care homes. We are trying to make a club at Windward School to go over to these care centers frequently. We are excited to spread our idea throughout Los Angeles. This week was mainly about the forum. We spent Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday preparing for the forum which was on Thursday. We even got some adults whose parents had Alzheimer's to show them how to use an IPad! We were very successful at the forum and hope to continue this project and show patients how to use IPads!
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So as we conclude our project, and presentation day approaches, we could not be more excited to publiscize our hard work and amazing data to the public. So to keep our minds focused we made an explicit plan as to how we were approaching this week, and it involved a lot of finishing touches. This plan distributed the work and made sure we stayed focused on tasks.
Tasks including our poster. Knowing our poster is very significant, we spent time really looking at it, making sure it was appealing to the eye, easy to understand, extremely compelling, and short, however informing. Trying to incorporate all these aspects was somewhat difficult though the group mate who worked on it did well. We incorporated a pie graph we made on an application to be informing and also found very interesting pictures of Dementia patient’s brains compared to normal people’s brains in order to intrigue the viewer. In our opinion, the poster’s final product was a success. Besides the poster, we finally got in contact with the community outreach chair in our school. Her response to the idea was also positive. In this upcoming week, during our presentation, we are looking forward to presenting the plan to her once again. Though this time, in great detail, thoroughly, and in person. Lastly, we decided that for our tangible artifact on our presentation table we could allow the visitors to actually interact with some of the exact games we showed the patients. Overall, this week was productive. We now have a good amount of time to prepare a speech and a solid, clear, interactive, and interesting way to present our well executed project. As Tuesday approached, our group was extremely eager to start working and executing our plan. So without further to do, we prepared our apps, surveys, activities, and agenda in class. Then by lunch we headed to the care home. When we arrived at the center we were immediately greeted and welcomed, then escorted to our first subject. At eighty three years of age, and a little dyslexic, this woman, despite what you would think, was very surprised but pleased to see some sort of youth interacting with her. She was generally responsive, but was uneasy and relatively affected. However, she was completing our game at an average, maybe a little slower, pace. When we surveyed her she responded with very positive feedback and set an outstanding first patient despite how she was a little uneasy and had a tough time comprehending the work. Next, we maneuvered to the upstairs of the home where our next subject was waiting. She was sixty three years of age and was partially illiterate. She completed our games quite easily and also enjoyed the process. Lastly, we met an eighty seven year old male who was very smart when it came to vocabulary, grammar, and communication, but had a difficult time focusing on one game where you are shown a series of arrows, and you have to locate the one in the center and tell which way it is pointing. Despite the arrow being highlighted the man couldn't pinpoint it and tell which way it was pointing. Observing how this patient’s mind worked had to be one of the most interesting things I have ever witnessed for before we played the arrow game, we played a much more difficult game that progressively got very, very, difficult. At the end, the game got so hard, it asked the subject what perspicacious’ meaning was and he knew, however he didn't know which way the arrow was pointing! At this point, our group was completely stunned and couldn't believe how his mind was working! Thursday, we encountered much the same, both the subjects we interviewed reacted positively and enjoyed the Ipads. This time, both were male, and both were having a difficult time communicating, but did well for the most part. What shocked my group and me was that two of the three subjects we met with on Tuesday couldn't remember us only two days after! So in conclusion, our visits went just as we hoped or even better. Subjects wanted to interact and benefited from the experience just as much as we did. The way we first hand experienced these peoples mind was amazing and stunning. It was genuinely a shocking week. Our first week's work was about creating an itinerary and assigning jobs for the weeks to come, as well as developing a strong base of research to give us a good understanding of the disease in order to select a fixable problem. For the agenda and job aspect of this week, we decided that we should work together on all aspects of the project. However, we should alternate on writing blogs posts in order to divide the work properly, and hear the perspectives of everyone. For such an intricate disease, finding a problem that is fixable, with our capabilities as seventh graders has been difficult. As we search and search our research only leads us to medical information, and other complex problems in the brain of dementia patients. Accepting this, we have been focusing on other aspects of daily life that are causing patients distress. Though even finding a common problem in day to day life, besides their communication, memory, and thinking ability, is difficult. At this point, to find a problem we need to talk to an expert who has dealt with Alzheimer patients and knows what is necessary to keep them well. Though we struggle with finding a problem, Alzheimer’s has been relatively enjoyable to research. Though some articles are more interesting, interactive, and better to read than others, Alzheimer’s has a compelling nature. Our group can unanimously say that learning how people treat a fast moving (progressive), difficult to slow down disease that results in behavioral problems and other emotional things has been genuinely fun. So in conclusion, though we finished the tasks assigned for the week, the big question for next week is whether or not we can find a fixable problem. This week, our group set goals that must be completed. Honestly, at first we were struggling, as many groups can relate. Finding a cure for a very complicated and intricate disease like Alzheimer's is nearly impossible, so was finding a problem, medically fixable, to our capabilities. We focused on small things that could better the life of a patient with Alzheimer's, and eventually ended up expanding on it to make the idea much more substantial. The following is how we reached our point of success this week.
Firstly, our research in databases and websites wasn't leading us to a problem. Though we could have searched harder, time was running out, and we very much needed a problem. So we turned to the possibility of contacting a type of specialist, which we did. The first person we contacted was helpful, however not helpful enough. Her main purpose was to publicize the organization she was working with to us. When we asked her if she knew of any problems we could solve, she didn't give us a clear answer, and instead she referred us to one of her classes the organization offered, and when we asked if there is any volunteer work, or work with the patients we could conduct, she said there wasn't. So unfortunately, we time crunching, Tuesday comes to a close and we have no problem as well as no clue on whom to reach out to. On Wednesday we made a significant stride to a problem. As the research I did at home again told me was that talking to specialist is better, despite how the useless the first interaction was. And it did prevail. For when spoke with an organization, alz.org, the woman sent us a pamphlet of information and told us that a common way of slowing down dementia was with mental exercise, and that some patients, in some homes, are not receiving the amount they need to be. Now knowing this we acted on it by researching caregiving and support groups for Alzheimers only to find that they are well aware of the daily need for mental exercise. On Thursday, we thought and thought for the whole class period on how we could tweak this problem or come up with another problem that we could solve. Eventually our group and Kevin came up with a perfect idea/theory. That since most of these dementia patients are over the age of 65 and 70 the type of mental exercise most likely consists of the paperwork, including sudoku and other puzzles. And with the world evolving technology is becoming a more prominent factor in people's day-to-day lives. So we decided to introduce mental exercise through technology, and have called a dementia care home to try to see what their patients think about it. This is sustainable because we could potentially make a permanent use of technology in the home, and we would have qualitative data from the caregivers, the directors, and the patients. After calling several homes we learned, coincidentally, there was a dementia home located in our vicinity. As we did more search into what we would do when we arrive at the home we, unconsciously, realized that as we go to care homes, we are collecting data to show that patients react well this, and that our final product will be creating a group within our school to do this regularly.
We downloaded, and set up, four brain stimulating apps to see how they reacted, they were Lumosity, Fit Brains Trainer, Mind Games, and Elevate. At this point with our accounts ready, we contacted the care home and they willingly allowed us. We have set dates up for next Tuesday, May the 3rd, and Thursday, May the 5th. My groupmates and I are now extremely excited to interact with these patients, and see their reaction to the new technology. However, unanimously we are all anxious for we don’t know how this will play out. Whether the patients will be too affected to speak, interacted, or answer, or whether they will be responsive and willing to participate. The unknown aspect of this is really making us more excited, so we can see how dementia patients are in real life, but the other aspect of this is making us nervous, that they will not want to interact therefore leading us to find a new problem and all our work so far, going to waste. |
Sam Rahbar, Zack Lurie, Michael KavounasWe, as a group, have a drive to impact the dementia patients in our community with the "little things." Read how! |