Unrealistically high expectations of the value of classroom computing have often beenfuelled by the results of research studies conducted in ideal conditions. Although I do not view the use of technology as an educational magic wand, I do wish to present the results of a program involving the use of technology, which has made a major difference to an individual child. Monkland State School, Gympie could be described as a typical primary school, trying to build up resources in technology and beingexposed to familiar constraints. As a pilot school for inclusion of children with intellectual disabilities we are interested in innovative techniques that have the potential to increase educational outcomes and to present a workable model of a socially just school. This paper describes how a student with moderate intellectual disabilities has managed to master complex functions of desktop publishing software and has improved her status in the classroom as a genuine expert in the field. Positive effects on her self-esteem have been noted by school staff, her parents and her classmates and this has encouraged us to continue with developing her skills in multimedia presentations.
Background and Aims of the Program
Belinda is a ten-year-old girl with moderate intellectual disabilities. She came to
Monkland in Year Two as part of a trial scheme to 'include' children with disabilities in
regular schools. When she arrived, she had virtually no reading or writing skills and suffered from a lack of social and communication skills. Her biggest problem was that she did not seem to be able to relate to or work with others very well. She only completed simple tasks and behaved as an isolated individual with little concern about what was happening around her. She had little interest in socialisation. This I attribute to a lack of self esteem and a stubbornness to enter into a process that she perceived as being fearful.
In the early stages of the scheme the 'island in the mainstream' model was followed,
with a group of ten students working with a specially trained teacher who encouraged as much 'integration' with the regular class as possible. After much consternation and debate we moved away from this model to placing the children in different regular classrooms with extra teacher aide support time. This year in my Year Five class I have two children who have been externally ascertained as having extremely high support needs and Belinda is one of them.
Since starting at the school she had shown a great improvement in her ability to read due to some excellent work by her previous teachers and teacher aides and some determined effort on her part. This improvement was encouraging although she still lacked communication and social skills and liked to avoid any form of writing.
My plan was to devise a program that would build up positive feelings about
communication and to reduce her fear of writing and to provide her with a sense of
achievement. This achievement needed to be recognised by both Belinda and her peers.
Teaching and Experimenting with Desktop Publishing Skills
It is difficult to impart how exciting it is when a child with special needs responds to learning activities in such a way that achievement of important goals became possible in a relatively short time. Describing the activities and processes involved seem relatively ordinary given that many children learn similar skills in schools around the state on a daily basis. What seemed extraordinary to me was that Belinda could not cope with many areas of work normally covered at her age level yet she could master and retain complex skills using the computer and use them in an appropriate way. Here was an avenue for Belinda to taste success and a framework to build many learning experiences that would be of enormousbenefit.
The basic plan was to provide Belinda with a high level of skills in desktop publishing and some multimedia aspects of Windows and to take the emphasis off text by supplementing communication in whatever ways possible. This experience needed to be completed in an enjoyable way to build up positive experiences with an aim that Belinda would be seen by her peers as a genuine expert in this field. It was also considered that this would lead to extra avenues of oral communication between Belinda and her classmates.
Belinda's concept of working with written text was not a positive one. She would
refuse to write anything apart from copying text from a book. Any thoughts she wished to communicate in a written form had to be completed with a high level of help from an adult. Desktop publishing, although using text, was seen by Belinda to be a totally new experience to handwriting in her book. This meant that the development of past negative feelings was not such a strong barrier to achievement. Options available in Microsoft Publisher allowed for the importance of text in communicating to be de-emphasised. Simple features such as the addition of graphics and borders meant that Belinda could present a relevant thought or idea in a way that did not depend entirely on text. Text became more fun as she learnt to manipulate the size and style of the font. After this idea became familiar it was a logical step to progress to 'Word Art' where the use of shapes in changing the words added an extra dimension to handling text.
After working with her I realised that some features of high end wordprocessors and desktop publishers could be used to reduce the importance of text and to develop a sense of fun and playfulness with communication. Other students of mine in the past had used these features to embellish their existing command of text, whereas in this program they were used to get away from text initially and to build up a positive response to forming and recording ideas.
I wondered early in the planning stages if a simple word processor would be the
appropriate tool to accommodate the aims of the program. Belinda had shown an ability to remember and use complex functions so I opted for desktop publishing as it offered more flexibility and options to supplement text. Belinda has a fascination for functions that allow her to take control of the computer. This was really first bought to prominence when a mouse malfunctioned on a classroom computer. As I wanted to load a wordprocessor and enlarge the font size to an appropriate level for another student with disabilities, I used the Windows keyboard commands. Belinda who was only familiar with using the mouse stopped work on her computer and demanded to know how I achieved the same results with the keyboard. I quickly went through the commands and over the next few days she experimented with them until she reached a good level of competence.
This emphasised the need
to not lower expectations because a student has intellectual disabilities. Many experienced Windows users find themselves in difficulties without a mouse yet Belinda finds it amusing to use alternatives and to show off her skills.
As I had hoped, she responded with great enthusiasm to the addition of graphics and borders to her work. Initially this was a fairly unstructured 'playtime' with these functions but later became a more sophisticated choice of border, graphic and text to convey an idea. I agree with constructivist research that scaffolding needs to be implemented in a sensitive way or meaningful constructions are not likely to occur. ( Cobb, Yackel and Wood 1992 and Bransford and Vye 1989) Taking this stance I took the lead from the student about when instruction was needed and when experimentation was allowed to proceed. As skills were developed, they were applied to meaningful tasks such as expressing ideas or prior experiences.
Gradually the amount of text used in the documents was increased as Belinda was
encouraged to discuss ideas or experiences and then to present them. Choosing from a great variety of fonts and sizes added extra motivation and allowed her to see words in a more positive way. This was further enhanced when 'word art' functions were used to alter the shape of the text. Previously she felt intimidated by text but now she felt that by changing the attributes that she was exerting power over the words. She would often change her typing to 'dingbats' and challenge me to read them!
One of the main learning activities I wanted to generate was an increase in oral
communication. Belinda started to show a willingness to discuss ideas for publication with either myself or other adult helpers in the classroom. An example of this was discussions about frogs followed up by looking at frogs and books about them. A page was then produced with appropriate text, borders and graphic. After the printing of the document more discussion followed between Belinda and other class members.
Belinda has become totally independent with the use of this software and I have
started using her as a peer tutor with other students when they need to publish work. Apart from my initiation of this process, it now occurs regularly that children seek out Belinda on an informal basis when they forget how to use various functions. This is contributing to the development of her oral communication skills and her self-esteem. There is little doubt that she is viewed by the other students as a genuine expert in this field.
My plans to extend this process include introducing her to the use of the microphone and sound card to record speech and embed this in her documents. This will also serve the purpose of developing oral skills and add another alternative to text. To make the use of her graphics more challenging and appropriate we will be looking at scanning with a small hand held scanner and CD-ROM based graphics collections. I have no doubt that in time Belinda will be able to use these functions completely independently and that they will add to the tools she already has to express herself successfully and confidently.
Roots of the Program
Often as teachers we are asked to reflect on the directions we take in the classroom,
so it would be worthwhile to examine theoretical influences and policy that led me to
undertake this project. Laurillard (1994) when discussing multimedia and the changing
experience of learners argued that, " interaction between the learner and the world is a vital part of the learning process" and cites discussion, interaction, adaption and reflection as the key features of the teaching- learning process. In this project I have deliberately set out to construct a learning environment where interaction (verbal and non-verbal) would increase between a particular child and the world. Like Laurillard I have been influenced by constructivist learning theory and these activities were designed to alter the individual constructs of a particular person. Research on the development of schema has shown that misconceptions or negative feelings about a particular concept or task are sometimes extremely difficult to change (Yates and Chandler 1992). Using Belinda's positive feelings about computers and her high level of motivation in this area offered an opportunity to reintroduce the use of text in a positive way.
Social constructivists emphasise that learning is essentially an individual construction but that it is socially mediated. They place a great importance on interaction with others (Ellerton and Clements 1992). Having Belinda increase her level of communication through peer tutoring and the discussion of her ideas with adults has ensured a greater social influence in her learning. This influence has been reciprocal with Belinda positively affecting the learning of others and as a result increasing her feelings of self-esteem. Paris and Burns (1989) claim that "all theories of constructivism emphasise the role of an active organism who acts on the environment rather than simply responding to it." This is why Belinda responded
so well to these activities. She was given a role where she took an active part and controlled equipment through her developing skills to extend her communication with the world.
Apart from learning theory I have been influenced by social justice policies that urge us as teachers to ensure that barriers to participation by disadvantaged groups are removed. This process of achieving social justice will not be successful unless we look at factors that limit or exclude participation by particular students. When designing programs for children with intellectual disabilities we need to be realistic in setting our goals but we should not assume that complex tasks cannot be mastered. Research by Means and Knapp (1991) demonstrated that advanced skills can be completed by disadvantaged students. Perhaps exposure to ideas such as these meant that I was more open minded about what Belinda could achieve in this area.
Under the equity guidelines extra time should be devoted to children identified as
disadvantaged with the aim of increasing outcomes to bridge the gap between them and the other students. In this case Belinda received more computer time than her peers. She also received more of my time in the initial stages of the program. Demands on my time have eased over the past few months but will increase again when the next stage of the program is implemented. This has meant that I have had to manage my time carefully to ensure that other students receive an appropriate amount of contact. Factors such as these should beconsidered by the Education Department so that class sizes for groups including children with intellectual disabilities should not be allowed to exceed twenty-five.
Conclusion
Working with Belinda has proven to me that advanced features of computer
technology can be accessed by children with intellectual disabilities. They can help provide a supportive and challenging section of the classroom environment and provide an avenue for a fresh start for those children suffering from negative feelings about traditional pen and paper tasks. Recently two things occurred which displayed the value of the program. Belinda's parents had an interview with me as they had heard a rumour that the bus which takes special needs children from the other side of town at no cost would not be operating next year. They reported that they were so pleased with her progress that some way would be found to ensure her continuing enrolment. Luckily the rumour about the bus was not true as some children
selected for the inclusion program come from areas outside the usual school catchment.
The other occurred when two year five students presented me with a disc containing a published report on the school camp for the weekly newsletter. When I asked them if they had any trouble producing the document their reply was, "No, Belinda set everything up and helped when we were stuck!"