Author: Silvia Casu
Affiliation: INAF-Osservatorio Astronomico di Cagliari
Country: ITALY
Co-Author(s): Alessia Luca
Country: ITALY
Title: Using new technologies to improve contents accessibility and
INAF has a long experience in the design and production of educational material for students of any age and academic level, both locally and nationally (see for example the experience of the Italian portal Astro.edu). A well-designed educational project requires an initial design effort to ensure a good level of usability and accessibility making learning objects and materials easy to use for everyone. To make it possible, it’s essential to research and test new innovative teaching and design methods following the guidelines of evidence-based learning in order to achieve greater learning efficiency and effectiveness.
In our recent Case Study on an educational project in kindergartens, after a contextual and target analysis, we began to design and develop an interactive multimedia ebook, with the aim to promote a collaborative environment and a user-driven/student-centered learning style. For this purpose, we created Blue, the main character of our tales: Blue is curious and creative but completely unexperienced of everything, so children are engaged to help him to learn and understand the world.
The ebook, an interactive multi-device app, is easily accessible to all, thanks to highly legible fonts, transcription of text into interactive augmented alternate characters (CAA) and synchronized reading of the text in a natural voice. All these features are showed to be effective even in the presence of learning difficulties and autism spectrum disorders. The multimedia integrated contents to be downloaded (such as printables versions of the plot, worksheets for educational activities, games and the audiobook) complete the final product. This type of product could be easily updated and implemented over time and, of course, it’s an important starting point for similar new projects we will carry on in the future. Moreover, the experience has the creation of a new set of AAC pictograms to be freely distributed as by-products.
References
[1]: Bransford, J.D.,A.L. Brown, and R.R. Cocking, eds. 2000. “How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School.” Washington, DC: National Academy Press
[2]: Jonassen, D. H., Peck, K. L., and Wilson, B. G. (1999). “Learning with technology: A Constructivist Perspective.” Merrill/Prentice Hall, New Jersey
[3]: Iacono, T., Trembath, D., Erickson S., 2016, “The role of augmentative and alternative
communication for children with autism: current status and future trends.” Neuropsychiatric Disease and Treatment, 12: 2349–2361