The Young Computing and Electronics Clubs constitute an inclusive, humane and supportive movement, in accordance with the will of the Cuban State, which dedicates considerable efforts so that the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) is massive and comprehensive, so that absolutely all members of society, without any distinction, can have access to ICT and in this sense the Young Clubs play the role of socializing entities.
The subsystem of Special Education is one of the most significant achievements of and is a way to insert into society people with physical-motor, visual, auditory and mental disabilities, work that is carried out at no cost to those affected and giving samples of a high sense of human sensitivity.
In the context of the Young Clubs, difficulties or deficiencies associated with the teaching and learning processes that take place in them are revealed. This work aims to identify the needs related to the use of educational software to support special education and propose a software aimed at providing attention and maintaining the skills acquired in the special education curriculum by people with special intellectual and educational needs. permanently, who attend the Young Computer Club.
Introduction
Background
The fundamental mission of the Young Clubs, considered as centers at the service of the community, is to support the computerization of Cuban society and basically this is accomplished through educational activities, in the form of Computer and Electronics courses to users who request it, without no other requirement than the desire to learn and update on the world of Computer Science. The instructive process in these facilities is massive, without distinction of any kind. In order to be admitted, the level of prior preparation of the user interested in enrolling in the courses is not taken into account.
It is evident that the teaching that takes place in the Young Clubs has to be in tune with the demands imposed by the Scientific Technical advances and the current Information Age, where a true ocean of information has flooded life and it is necessary to teach the students learn to learn, learn to be and learn to live with others.
The inclusive nature of these facilities places the instructors and technical staff who work there before the need to make an initial diagnosis of the people who request their services, in order to know what are the learning strategies they use and be able to detect their needs and implement possible ways of attending to their training demands.
Diagnosis is an essential way through which a transformative and effective educational intervention can be prepared. Every educational program requires an evaluation and diagnosis of the present situation; this is a precondition for making decisions about what to do and how to do it.
One of the needs detected in the Young Club environment is the absence of ICT applications that allow better care and maintenance of skills to people with intellectual and permanent special educational needs (SEN) (mentally retarded). who attend these facilities.
From the third need mentioned above, an experience of using ICT has been developed to provide care for people with permanent intellectual special educational needs (basically mildly mentally retarded) who wished to join activities at the Young Club.
For this, once the diagnosis of mild mental retardation made by the Center for Diagnosis and Orientation was known, a sequence of three stages was conceived for the development of a course that would allow them to exercise, reinforce and maintain the skills acquired by them in the school.
General school educational software applications were basically used, adapted to the learning pace of students with special educational needs, which did not fully meet the expectations of these users, who are mostly graduates of special schools and looking for something new in the Young Club. Based on the above considerations, a problem situation emerges.
How to give attention and maintain the skills acquired to people with special educational needs (SEN) of the intellectual and permanent nature who attend the Young Club of Computing and Electronics?
What characteristics must a software have that allows attention and maintenance of the skills acquired by people with special educational needs (SEN) of the intellectual and permanent nature who attend the Young Club of Computing and Electronics?
Therefore, the general objective of the work is precisely to propose a software that allows to give attention and help to maintain the skills acquired by people with special educational needs of an intellectual nature and permanently in the special education curriculum.
Justification of the socio-educational intervention
In Special Education, the objective of using computers is to help improve corrective-compensatory work. That is why the benefits of its use by students with Special Educational Needs (SEN) are multiplied and constitute a resource with great educational possibilities: they enrich their learning, accentuate their strengths, eliminate the sense of failure, help to identify possible talents and vocational interests and can reduce the impact of disability and improve the quality of life of people with SEN.
To this end, the Computing Program in each grade of the School is designed to give priority to educational software and it is through interaction with them that elementary computer skills are promoted that allow the proper use of the computer in the teaching-learning process.. This work is essentially aimed at maintaining the skills acquired by mildly mentally retarded people, but it will undoubtedly be useful also for other people, whether or not they present an intellectual disability. It aims to contribute to the integration into society of people with SEN of an intellectual nature, by providing them with one more alternative to reaffirm and maintain the knowledge and skills they possess.
Theoretical study for the topic:
The treatment of a problem related to Special Education necessarily invites us to take as a starting point the pedagogical ideology of teacher José Martí, taking into account the validity of his postulates, which refer specifically to this type of teaching. That is why it is considered important to begin the work with two phrases that demonstrate the illustrious vision that the Master had regarding special teaching:
"… Those living are born dead, and the teaching reveals them to life, and the work of patience and kindness bears fruit in them."
"… every effort to disseminate instruction is futile, when teaching is not accommodated to the needs, nature and future of the recipient…".
In these phrases by José Martí, his comprehensive and illuminating vision with respect to Special Education and its more specific expression, special schools, is appreciated.
According to the World Health Organization, two categories of mental retardation are distinguished: one is determined by social influences (without injury to the central nervous system) and the other that appears as a result of some organic injury to the central nervous system, or to the insufficient development of it. The first category is not related to true mental retardation, since it constitutes a consequence of social and pedagogical neglect, and the second is mental retardation in the true sense of the term; This can be classified on the basis of intelligence quotient (IQ), developmental characteristics, educational possibilities, teaching and others.
To classify mental retardation, three points of view are used in the Centers for Diagnosis and Orientation: 1) according to the depth of the intellectual defect and taking into account social adaptation; 2) according to etiology, taking into account the moment in which the lesion of the central nervous system appears and 3) according to the forms, taking into account the accompanying syndromes.
In Cuba, mental retardation is defined as a state of the individual in which alterations are produced in psychic processes in general, mainly in the cognitive sphere.
The most convenient classification made of mental retardation is that which takes into account the clinical manifestations, the etiology, the moment of appearance of the lesion of the central nervous system and the possibilities of the patient to adapt socially. For this, criteria such as: depth of the intellectual defect, based on social adaptation; etiology, specifying the moment in which the lesion appears and the forms taking into account the accompanying syndromes. Based on these criteria, independent classifications are made.
Education for students with intellectual and permanent SEN (that is, for the mentally retarded) focuses on achieving maximum development of the potential of these schoolchildren.
Considering the intellectual defect and social adaptation, mental retardation can be classified as mild, moderate, severe or profound. This work focuses specifically on mild mental retardation, in which there is basically a delay in language and motor development, poor vocabulary development, insufficient psychic development, concrete and superficial thinking. According to some psychological characteristics of the mildly mentally retarded are:
- Poor differentiation of objects and phenomena from objective reality Deficiencies in the solution of logical problems Constant inhibition Affecting cognitive processes, especially the process of perceiving and feeling; In other words, sensory perception or window of knowledge. Affecting main rational operations, such as abstraction and generalization. They have concrete thinking and little development of language. Understanding significantly affected. Insufficiently differentiated perception and observation. Memory is of diminished quality, characterized by inaccuracy when remembering and reproducing, little assimilation and inability to internalize what has been studied.
This work aims to enter the world of people with Special Educational Needs of an intellectual and permanent nature, specifically in the category of mildly mentally retarded, those who require individual attention, with special programs and methods that basically provide the reaffirmation of content, so that in this way they assimilate the essential topics of the subjects received and are able to live independently and work according to the preparation obtained.
Educational informatics. Educative technology
It is clear that computer applications can facilitate the learning of concepts, methods, principles; help solve problems of various kinds; contribute to developing different types of skills; For this reason, Educational Informatics can be defined by stating that “it is the part of Informatics in charge of directing, in the broadest sense, the entire process of selection, preparation, design and exploitation of computational resources aimed at teaching management, understood as this is computer-assisted teaching and teaching administration ”.
The attributes or characteristics of computers would be of little use to create learning environments, if there were no educational technologies that would support and make it possible to put educational approaches into practice.
Educational technology, as a contemporary pedagogical trend, has reached a notable diffusion in our days, especially due to the emphasis on its immediate advantages and a highly technical and assertive language. The center of his interest is to develop a "technology of instruction" similar to the concept of technology of material production; therefore, the attention is directed towards the methods and means rather than the contents.
The origins of educational technology can be found in programmed teaching, developed with the idea of increasing the efficiency of the direction of the teaching process. Its creation is attributed to BF Skinner, a professor at Harvard University, in 1954.
Programmed teaching can be defined as: «Technical resource, method or system of teaching. It can be applied by means of didactic machines but also by means of books, cards, and even oral communication ».
Many theoretical and methodological approaches have characterized Educational Technology in recent years:
In 1968 Gagné y: defines that Educational Technology is a body of technical knowledge related to systemic design and direction in education, based on scientific research. Educational technology can be understood as the development of a set of systematic techniques and accompanying practical knowledge to design, manage and evaluate educational systems.
In 1978 Chadwick: defines Educational Technology as the application of a scientific and systematic approach with concomitant information, to the improvement of Education in its various manifestations and levels.
Starting in the 1980s, with the appearance of personal computers, computer technology invades all spheres of society, including of course education. The spectacular lowering of equipment and the impressive technological development of recent years has given a great boost to Computer Aided Teaching and with it Educational Technology has reached further development.
In 1980 UNESCO stated that Educational Technology is a systematic application of scientific knowledge resources to the process that each individual needs to acquire and use knowledge.
In 1981 in the 1st National Congress of Educational Research (Mexico) it is declared that Educational Technology is a set of procedures or methods, techniques, instruments and means derived from knowledge, systematically organized in a process, to obtain educational products or results from effective and replicable way.
In 1986 Chadwick says that Educational Technology is the systematic approach and application of a set of scientific knowledge for the ordering of the specific field known as Education.
In 1993 Bravo stated that Educational Technology is the creative application of techniques and procedures for the improvement of the educational system and for the prevention and solution of problems in which the systemic approach plays an important role, management efficiency and educational management, the appropriate selection of teaching aids and research in the pedagogical area, understanding by technique that set of coordinated actions that are aimed at solving problems.
In 1999 Rosales Gutiérrez says that Educational Technology are the means of communication and instructional methods that can be used to educate. Examples of Educational Technology are: Computers, Sesame Street, Web, multimedia, videocassettes, photographs, movies, blackboard, books, newspapers, compact discs, videodisks, songs, cartoons, the case method, television, games, Internet, slides, slides, audiocassettes, documentaries, bookmarks, radio, theater, DVD, CD-ROM, chair, laboratories, the Socratic method, among others.
Educational Technology proposes without a doubt new fields of pedagogical reflection. Learning in schools today is undergoing notable changes, as ICTs have been incorporated into educational venues. This situation forces students and teachers to prepare with greater awareness and efficiency.
In 2000, according to Alanís Huerta, it is worth reiterating that Educational Technology is a set of strategies, techniques and procedures that are very useful for teachers at any educational level. But misused it can also become a serious problem; Well, you can lose sight of what is fundamental, which is mastering the content of training; and in this case the substance cannot be sacrificed for the form.
Once the previous opinions and others that are not related in this report on the concept of Educational Technology have been analyzed, it has been possible to specify some of its purposes, among them: optimizing education; solve pedagogical problems; offer one more option to the pedagogical model that is applied; achieve scientific rigor in the educational field; achieve greater efficiency and effectiveness in educational systems and more effectiveness in education, as well as achieve greater equity in education.
According to the appreciation of the author of this work: Educational Technology is the union of various resources or media (videos, projectors, computers, etc.) used with the aim of planning, organizing and evaluating the teaching-learning process and contribute to development of abilities and potentialities in students.
Educational technology in Special Education
Since the beginning of the incorporation of technologies into the school, its potential has been manifested in the teaching and learning processes of students with SEN and even more, as a means for communication, play, mobility and control of the environment.
In the specific case of the use of computational technology in Special Education, Prat (cited by Sancho, 1995) warns that the increase in communication, informational and labor possibilities that these media make possible can constitute a danger, insofar as it is intended cloister the physically handicapped in their homes. On this aspect, it should be clear that the possibilities offered by these media cannot, at any time, replace the role of interpersonal relationships and that only direct interaction between people, disabled or not, can contribute to the individual development of each human being, like being eminently social.
There is a custom or habit of using physical accessories to expand, replace or improve an organic structure or function that is altered or injured. However, information technology allows the incorporation of new highly versatile control systems, receivers and actuators that have substantially revolutionized prosthesis design. For example: an intellectual deficiency is compensated by using tools that allow exercising, improving and maintaining the person's intellect. These tools are nothing more than different modes of application of ICT in teaching. In other words, new technologies allow access to all computer resources without even having to touch the computer keyboard.
It can be verified then that the areas of application of Educational Technology cover all kinds of educational needs: reduced intellectual understanding, limited mobility due to motor disorders, speech and language treatment, amblyopia or blindness, among others.
The application of ICT in Special Education contributes to:
- Improve communication. Develop cognitive and school learning processes. Develop language (improvement of speech, lip reading and language skills). Improve assessment systems.
Among the types of impairment or disability in which the use of technologies can be a key tool is intellectual deficiency or reduced intellectual understanding.
It is no secret to anyone that the use of ICT opens qualitatively higher horizons in the case of people with SEN:
- They raise the possibilities of communication (oral and written, face-to-face or at a distance). They allow to improve regulatory mechanisms such as: planning, selection, control and evaluation in the learning or problem-solving stages. They promote the development of mental operations, such as the organization, coordination, and processing of incoming information. They facilitate the solution of motivational and affective problems.
Computers with a motivating medium par excellence in the teaching-learning process, are used as tools for the development of strategies, including video games, as well as to establish mechanisms of orientation and regulation of behavior among other applications that serve as media teaching.
The use of novel teaching aids in the teaching and learning process of people with intellectual SEN greatly promotes the motivation and interest of these students. Examples of these teaching aids are the different modes of use of ICT, including: trainers, exercisers, simulators, tutorials, virtual learning environments, etc.
In Special Schools computer applications are used as teaching aids to motivate and contribute to the development of the intellect of students. These educational software are those that are used basically in all schools, aimed at sensory development, training tasks and recreation tasks. The same software is used in general and special education, therefore it is required to develop software that responds to Special Education in order to maintain the acquired skills, a problem that is intended to be solved with this work.
According to the Soviet psychologist LSVigotsky, teachers based on the psychological characteristics of the mentally retarded must develop teaching methods on the basis of demonstrative principles of concrete representations, with real-life phenomena, to form a real conception of the world, taking into account that his abstract thinking can evolve through operations with real objects.
Proposed Solution
People with permanent intellectual special educational needs (SEN), or in other words, the mentally retarded who visit the Young Club, are currently cared for with educational software used in general education, adapted to the characteristics and at the rate of learning of these people.
This work is essentially aimed at the care and maintenance of skills acquired by people with intellectual disabilities, in the specific case of those diagnosed with mild mental retardation.
Based on the results of a diagnosis of the current situation of the people who visit the Young Computer Club with the characteristics of being mildly mentally retarded, taking into account the population and the planned sample, it was determined to make the proposal of a software that It did not focus on a specific subject, but through recreational activities, it allowed to give attention and help to maintain the skills acquired by these people, by exercising and reinforcing the knowledge acquired in their school, taking into account the psychological characteristics of people with mild mental retardation.
To plan the application, three fundamental considerations will be taken into account to take into account when planning teaching, according to Antonio Vaquero: the activity, the objectives and the evaluation.
The software to be developed must provoke the greatest possible activity in the student, so that it is not a passive entity and is not affected by monotony or boredom.
Taking into account the psychological characteristics of the mildly mentally retarded, the software will be essentially based on activities that allow activating mental processes such as sensory perception, memory, imagination, etc. and for this, certain indicators must be taken into account when evaluating, such as:
- The exercises must go from the easy to the more complex The exercises must go from the concrete to the abstract The students must go through different levels of complexity in the exercises or activities.
The system of exercises or activities that the software will provide will allow the correction and / or compensation of the cognitive processes, as well as the logical processes of thought in the mildly retarded, taking into account that these processes occur as a whole, in an integrated way and that they are only considered independently to justify and psychopedagogically substantiate the validity of the proposal. The computer is a means par excellence to activate the attention of people with mental retardation and with this a better activation of other processes is achieved.
Exercises to be included in the software
Taking into account the psychological characteristics of the mildly mentally retarded previously exposed:
- Puzzles or Puzzles (from 4 to 12 pieces): it is considered an integrative exercise, which develops thought, perception. It is widely used to develop logical thinking, it activates visual memory by having to remember the images and figures to be completed. Increasing levels of complexity are recommended, starting with simple puzzles of straight and diagonal cuts and later of curved cuts, based on images of comics, stories, experiences where objects of objective reality are observed. and at the same time integrally develop thought. When having to decide the way forward, when determining whether there are obstacles or not, one works on the logic of thought. They must be presented by levels from the simplest to the most complex,Simple variants will be proposed, with obstacles, with several alternatives, all with a goal, which represents the success that can be a visual stimulus, sound or both. Anagrams: they develop thinking and especially reasoning. They work closely linked to perceptual integration and attention. The levels of complexity will go from the union of letters to form syllables, the union of syllables to form words, to the union of words to form sentences and phrases. Crosswords: activates thinking and reasoning. It allows working with rational operations of thought such as abstraction and generalization. They must be simple, of few words, taking into account experiences and use images or objects from real life. Search for absurd objects in a sheet or image:This exercise essentially works on perception and reasoning, although it works on thought integrally. Search for equal and hidden details in a sheet: they can be worked independently or together. They work on perception, observation, allow comparison and therefore develop logical thinking Sequence completion: it is a basic exercise to facilitate the correction or training of logical thought processes (analysis, synthesis, abstraction, comparison, generalization). You should start with sequences of three sheets with few elements and go to other levels. Sequences of pictures of a story can be worked on, which will stimulate the development of memory and recall together. Connecting the dots: this exercise,Also called “Following the Path”, it mainly affects attention and perception, develops perceptual organization skills, visual-motor coordination, precision. Objectives and images of objective realization should be used. Memory exercises: as their name indicates, they are exercises aimed at exercising and maintaining memory. Elementary calculations: they are exercises aimed at activating cognitive processes, logical thinking and memory. Their complexity must be evaluated by a specialist. They will be exercises with basic operations, aimed at exercising and applying repetition of operations. Work with spelling: these exercises will also be aimed at activating cognitive processes; essentially memory,as they involve memorizing and applying basic rules of spelling.
It is important to insist that all exercises activate attention and work on cognitive processes and logical thinking, in an integral way they will lead to the maintenance of acquired skills.
According to the diagnosis of educational needs in people with intellectual and permanent SEN, it is considered that the most appropriate educational software modality is exercise programs, which basically present the learner with exercises in stages and progressively according to their learning rhythm., which do not provide excessive information or seek to facilitate the acquisition of new concepts. A software where practice and repetition are used essentially for learning and acquisition of skills; This is a widely recognized principle in learning theories to strengthen knowledge, improve intellect, and maintain acquired skills.
About software design
The communicative design of the application will be reconciled with specialists, which will include color and size of the buttons, types of graphics, amount of text per screen, typography, sound quality, timbre of the voice, color combinations, etc.
For the contextualized learning design of the software, the minimum and maximum levels of objectives to be achieved will be determined, recommended by the specialists, who will determine the contents and the exercises and activities to be included.
The software must be friendly, flexible, interactive, capable of actively involving the user in the instructional program; that is to say, that the subject responds actively to the environment and this in turn to her, which is given in function of the activity that motivates the student and that is implicit in the design of the message.
For its implementation, a structure-oriented programming language could be used, which allows the creation of suitable graphical interfaces and screens, or a basic programming language derived from Object-Oriented Programming, such as Borland Delphi.
Conclusions
This work is essentially aimed at characterizing the teaching or instructional activity carried out in the Joven Club and addressing a problem that arises when trying to satisfy the expectations of the different types of users who have varied needs in terms of their learning.
With the educational software proposal that is the general objective of this research, it is intended to obtain a product that allows to give better attention and help to maintain the skills acquired by people with intellectual needs and with a permanent character, who approach the Young Club once graduated from Special Education. That is why it is intended, without diminishing the importance and application of the software that are used systematically in the general school, to have educational software that allows, through recreational activities and exercises, to improve their intellectual capacity.
Undoubtedly the software will be feasible and of great importance to give attention to these people who, once they have graduated from Special Education, are looking for a place where they can exercise and maintain what they have learned and in the case of those who are still in school, they will have one more option to reinforce knowledge and skills acquired in school.
The software resulting from this work can be used not only in the Young Clubs, but also in the Special Schools that serve children with special intellectual educational needs, but it can also be used in general education, since the exercises that are proposed do not exclude any kind of student.
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