Inclusive Computing in Special Needs Classrooms

Abstract

With a growing call for an increased emphasis on computing in school curricula, there is a need to make computing accessible to a diversity of learners. One potential approach is to extend the use of physical toolkits, which have been found to encourage collaboration, sustained engagement and effective learning in classrooms in general. However, little is known as to whether and how these benefits can be leveraged in special needs schools, where learners have a spectrum of distinct cognitive and social needs. Here, we investigate how introducing a physical toolkit can support learning about computing concepts for special education needs (SEN) students in their classroom. By tracing how the students' interactions-both with the physical toolkit and with each other-unfolded over time, we demonstrate how the design of both the form factor and the learning tasks embedded in a physical toolkit contribute to collaboration, comprehension and engagement when learning in mixed SEN classrooms.

The Effect of Computer-Free Coding Education for Special Education Students on Problem-Solving Skills

“…Based on the research results; it can be indicated that coding education can provide many educational opportunities to support the problem-solving skills of special education students. Some of these opportunities are the ability to break down problems into smaller parts and to draw on both logic and creativity to figure out the best ways to solve them (Lechelt et al, 2018). To inform and educate the future generation, companies, universities should make investments and serious ventures for coding and robotic applications education.…”

“…It is thought that especially unplugged coding activities will appeal to a much wider group of students with having different disabilities. Lechelt et al (2018), in their research, found out that a physical toolkit (magic cube) could be used both supporting comprehensions of computational concepts and enabling students to get excited about learning with fun. Because of these, computer-aided coding activities may only address students having computer usage skills.…”

Coming to your senses

“…Verbally define physical sensors and sensing at the beginning of the session, with examples, to introduce the children to the concepts that they would be using during the exploratory activities. In steps 2 and 3 of the sessions, we used the Magic Cubes toolkit [18,39] to enable the children to explore and visualize sensor data (see Figure 2). The Magic Cubes are Arduinobased, wireless, hand-sized interactive cubes that contain a number of different embedded sensors.…”

“…The Magic Cubes are Arduinobased, wireless, hand-sized interactive cubes that contain a number of different embedded sensors. The cubes can be used to visualize sensor readings, and can be grasped, carried and shared easily, and in so doing encourage experimentation while exploring data [16,18]. Five different sensors were used with the cubes, for measuring the human body or environment (see Table 1).…”

“…Therefore, teaching this level of understanding and application requires considering how learning tasks can be developed to foster curiosity, experimentation, and importantly, "stepping out" [2] from the situated activity in order to analyze, evaluate, and reflect on what is being learned. As part of our approach, we used a sensor-based physical toolkit, called the Magic Cubes [39], that has been found to enable children to readily explore and experiment with sensing, measuring, and collecting data [18]. Here we wanted to see whether children could also use the toolkit to learn how to evaluate the reliability and accuracy of data and how informative it is.…”