LEARNING BY DOING
U.N SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOAL 4, QUALITY EDUCATION
Introduction
The advancement in technology has been crucial in all aspect of human development. Education is one key area that has benefitted a lot from the new Information Communication Technologies. More importantly, teaching the most vulnerable in the society, including children with autism requires the use of technologies. Children with autism find it difficult to concentrate and write at the same time. They easily lose concentration which becomes very difficult if you must teach them. If you are not patient and experienced to work or teach them, you would be angry because you can spend twice or more of the time in teaching them than you would for the children without autism. Children with autism love sound and colors, when handling them you have to find ways of merging the two and that is the objective for my project. My paramount focus is for them to write.
Why this project?
I chose this project because I had the chance to interact with some children with autism as well as children with writing difficulties. I got very attached to a four-year-old kid who had autism and I have always been thinking of what to do to make him write and concentrate at the same time. I wanted to do something to help him due to my love for the kid. Though he is the primary reason for my project, I also chose this project to help children in general concentrate and write at the same time. I have been teaching children for some time and writing is very essential in their growth process.
WHAT IS LEARNING BY DOING IN MY IPROJECT?
Learning by doing is the act of learning from experiences which comes directly from our own actions rather than learning from watching others perform, read descriptions, or listening to others etc. Though they are actions, they do not give the doing experience where you get direct experience with demonstration. This is exactly what my project is about. I had to learn everything as I worked on my project and this kept me going.
The project is to help kids master gesture before writing, (writing by hand with the use of the computer). Though the focus is children with autism, it can be used by every child who wants to master the art of writing with the hand. This project aims at combining both writing by hand and the computer. Since we are now in the technological era we cannot just encourage children to write using their hands, leaving out the computer. The traditional way of writing with paper is very essential for a child development. The paper feel gives another impact to the child. Some tests show that reading from a hard copy allows better concentration, while taking longhand notes versus typing onto laptops increases conceptual understanding and retention. Writing helps in developing the muscles in the hands and fingers. Writing also improves our communication skills. A research by Virginia Berninger, a University of Wisconsin psychologist, shows that the sequential finger movements required to write by hand activate brain regions involved with thought, language and short-term memory. Writing by hand also sparks up creativity.
How can we explore the digital tools application in the traditional way of children's writing?
Children would have to write on a paper but see the effect on the screen of a computer or tablet. In doing this, everything would have to be programmed. So firstly, the child would start by tracing the object or alphabet he wants to see on the computer on a piece of paper but in this case with slight color change in the object or alphabets on the computer screen. The feedback is to encourage the child not to give up but keep writing no matter how difficult it may seem. Also, there will be music and other activities added to the program to encourage the child. This concept of feedback and color change cannot be found in the traditional way since the paper does not speak and requires someone to do it. This would help them get both the impact from a paper and computer. Also, they would not need to be encouraged verbally always, since the encouragement and appraisal would come from the computer.
What I am learning on this project?
I have always been a stranger to programming, but this project moved me from my comfortable zone. I had to use software called PROCESSING to begin my journey in programming. I was not sure how it would work but my love to create something that this boy can use kept me going. I had ups and downs reading day and night about processing, autism, synesthesia and psychology. I got a broader understanding of what all these meant even though I had a faint knowledge of what they were.
Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neurological and developmental disorder that begins early in childhood and lasts throughout a person’s life. It affects how a person acts and interacts with others, communicates, and learns. It includes what used to be known as Asperger syndrome and pervasive developmental disorders. Also from my research, I saw that sometimes synesthesia has a link with autism. Since, people with autism have a higher than average chance of also having synesthesia, that's the condition in which the senses are mixed. Synesthesia and autism both have to do with colors and sound.
I had to contact PHD students, professors and specialists to make more enquiries. This broadened my scope of knowledge and made me yearn to learn more. Before starting this project I had some expectations of how I wanted it to be which sounded unrealistic to others. There were some discouragements as well. Amazingly I had no knowledge in coding and if I wanted my tool to be electronic then I needed to learn it. This got me disappointed initially but I told myself everything was possible only if you decide to do it. There would be mistakes and that would help me improve.
The learning by doing project made me discover the real meaning of “ HARD FUN”. To me, it is doing something you don’t have much knowledge in and experience in and struggling in the beginning but at the same time enjoying it by looking at the bigger picture of trying to make life better for the vulnerable. I was never distracted or discouraged by the mistakes.
My biggest challenge was how to program this but the drive and passion in me kept telling me I can do it. The beginning was a mess but due to peer-to-peer learning, I consulted two of my friends who are good in this field to help out. With their explanation and patience I started picking up and working on my project. The project started with lots of mistakes but that spurred me on to make it even better.
I am making a prototype using two shapes: circle and triangle which would have the paper feel and after testing I would improve on it using alphabets and numbers. I would go to schools to allow both autistic children and non-autistic children to draw their conclusion. I would also add the paper feel to it, where everything would be programmed so you would just need to attach the paper to a computer or tablet then you get the visual and audio effect of the alphabets or numbers.
CONCLUSION
I would test this in schools with children who have writing difficulties as well children with autism and improve on it using the feedback from the test as well. Also, I would contact professionals for more input. This would be low cost tool which can be purchased by everyone since most of the products made for such category of children are expensive.
REFERENCES
[1] https://theweek.com/articles/490493/how-writing-by-hand-makes-kids-smarter (02.04. 2018)
[2] https://medlineplus.gov/autismspectrumdisorder.html (29.12. 2018)
