Teaching children with disabilities core literacy skills more effectively using a tablet-based context driven web application

Abstract

Education is one of the pillars of the Maltese society since it brings progress and growth [1]. Recently, to improve our education system, we are implementing the emergent curriculum, where the child is put at the centre of his/her education. For this to take place the educator needs to listen and to observe the child to be able to plan around the child’s interest, and ‘scaffold’ on the child’s knowledge. Apart from this, the educator is also required to document the child’s progress; and communicate with the parents to give them the opportunity and space of being involved in their child’s education. This is quite time consuming and demanding process for the educators to do all by themselves. Considering the above, this study aims to create a storytelling gamified handwriting application to help children gain handwriting skills in an engaging way, while facilitating the educator’s everyday work by keeping them updated with the child’s progress and by easing communication with parents through a notes system. Consequently, educators have more time to observe, guide and assist the children during their learning process. Apart from that, the platform gives parents and educators a clear view of the child’s progress, making it easier for them to plan subsequent exercises to continue building on the child’s knowledge. With the aid of professional educators, the application was developed using ASP.NET Core MVC, and was subsequently tested by occupational therapists and parents who assist children with learning disabilities. The methodology used was iterative, so that the website could be developed and improved through continuous feedback. This storytelling gamified handwriting application seems to have succeeded in teaching children how to write in an engaging way, as most of the parents observed that their children preferred it over pen and paper. OTs also believe that this application will be engaging for children to use, however they are of the opinion that it should be used as a tool to prepare children to the process of pen and paper and not a replacement. OTs also found that the system was helpful by automatically recording and displaying the accuracy with which a child writes individual letters of the alphabet. By recording and visually displaying the child’s progress, it enabled them to have a good overview of the child’s depth of knowledge and progress, thereby making it easier for them to plan. Furthermore, the OTs appreciated the notes facility in the system, as they believe that this would really help them in communicating and involving parents in the child’s education.