Using ICT creatively with children with communication difficulties
Introduction
Many children and young people find it difficult to speak or write. Mary Walters, from the City of Edinburgh Arts and Learning Unit, uses readily available ICT creatively to help children and young people with communication difficulties.
Teachers will be familiar with the use of PowerPoint as a presentation tool within classrooms, seminars and conferences. Mary Walters has been finding more creative uses for presentation software for years. She uses BuildAbility, Hyperstudio , PowerPoint, and more recently i-stop motion to help children and young people with communication difficulties to express themselves.
Andrew's Alphabet
Windows Media Player file: Andrew's Alphabet (fast connection)
Windows Media Player file: Andrew's Alphabet (slow connection)
Andrew and Mary used Buildability to create an animated alphabet from 'A is for Apple' to 'Z is for Zig-Zag'.
'There are a lot of young people who find speaking hard but they can communicate in other ways. In special needs teaching you naturally employ as many different ways of facilitating expression from a young person, and it just so happens that today one of the best areas to do that is in a digital format. It's a nice way to see everything come together.'
Mary Walters, City of Edinburgh Arts and Learning Unit
If I ask you to write a story your natural reaction would probably be to pick up a pen or a pencil, find a piece of paper and start at the beginning. To tell a story you would think of what you want to say and simply talk. But what if you have difficulties in writing or speaking? How do you make your stories and share them with other people?
Madeleine's Trip to New Zealand
Windows Media Player file: Madeleine's Trip to New Zealand (fast connection)
Windows Media Player file: Madeleine's Trip to New Zealand (slow connection)
Madeleine and Mary used Buildability to tell the story of Madeleine's Trip to New Zealand.
The computer simply becomes a useful and flexible tool that allows young people to 'make marks' as any artist does. Its advantage over paint and pencil is that it offers the opportunity to add sound and voice, movement and colour through a variety of accessible devices including mice, switches and trackballs.
Recently, with the assistance of NESTA, Mary has embarked on a programme that will research the effect that more intuitive, non-text-based interfaces, have in developing creativity in young people.
'We're trying to develop something that will allow young people with learning difficulties to navigate a digital space. These children aren't lacking in ideas, they're lacking in language to express those ideas.'
Mary Walters, City of Edinburgh Arts and Learning Unit