Paper Reading #4: The Role of Tangible Technologies for Special Education

Comments
Derek Landini
Bain Mullins

Reference
Taciana Pontual Falcão
CHI 2010 Doctoral Consortium
Summary
This paper discusses the benefits of using tangible technologies in the special education community. While a lot of work has been done with regards to tangible technologies and special education -- targeting people with physical disabilities mostly -- this research paper talks about individuals with cognitive disabilities. This is particularly of interest given the fact that tangible technologies are specially suitable for children with special needs. Some of the disabilities exhibited these children include short attention span, poor verbal memory, cue-seeking, and imitative answers. These and more difficulties can be partly addressed by using short routines, keeping tasks short and varied, and using a VAK approach with the aid of visual examples to illustrate explanations.

As stated in the beginning of the summary, this paper aims to measure the effects of tangible interfaces in a classroom environment designed for kids with learning disabilities. In order to achieve this goal, the author set to study a children with MLD from ages 11 to 14.The children were exposed to a classroom where they could focus on learning science (for the case of this experiment the properties of light). This, along with empirical studies about teaching kids with MLD where the parameters used to conduct the resesarch.

Discussion
This is another paper that discusses methods on how to aid people with disabilities. I found interesting that the paper did not discuss any results, which makes me wonder about the success of this experiment. I really liked this paper because it intends to help people with cognitive disabilities instead of just people who are physically disabled.