Phones and tablets are seen most of the time as obstacles to children’s education. However, there are those who think that the relationship with the devices can have advantages if there is family mediation. This year, the Higher Technological University Spain (ISTE), from Ambato, presented the research project ‘Mobile applications in the learning of children with Down syndrome’.
In agreement with the Municipality of Ambato, ISTE developed the research in the El Peral inclusive centers, to obtain information on the needs of children and the environment in which they develop, and obtain results of the percentage of improvement in learning when using the infopedagogywhich is the integration of information and communication technologies with the educational curriculum.
“We have created a software whose application will have six buttons that will help children with gross motor skills (coordination of movements of arms and hands, feet and legs) and fine motor (movement of the fingers and toes)”, says engineer Danilo Galarza Torresano, teacher and project leader. “We also wanted to reach the cognitive part through gamification, by teaching them to correlate objects.” The fixation of knowledge, expressive language and the problem solving through play.
Soon, with the feedback obtained with groups of children with Down syndrome in Cuenca, Guayaquil, Quito, Riobamba, and other cantons of the Tungurahua province, they will be able to optimize the software to create the application and place it in the virtual stores.
The application is not for the exclusive use of children. It is designed so that parents and teachers can use it as support at home and at school, Well, until now they work intuitively, looking for resources randomly on the internet. This, says Galarza, made them see the need to publish pertinent information. “Apart from the application, we are generating scientific articles (ten in total) to be able to upload them to the web.”
The idea of creating an application to strengthen the education of children with Down syndrome with virtual media arose at the beginning of the pandemic, when the inclusion centers had to close. Galarza received support from the ISTE Web Application Development major and the research and outreach departments. “We started with the research aspect and then we created a demo. Today we already have a pilot, ”she says, explaining that they are developing the apks.
The last test was carried out at the Despertar de los Ángeles inclusion center, in the city of Riobamba. The next step will be to publish the free app, in mid-July 2022.
At the head of the team working on the development of the software there is the student Fermín Tene. The application project leader is Evelyn Rosado. The coordinator is Álvaro Quinzo, and the developers are Javier Toapanta Rodríguez, Jaime Fernando Murillo and John Neftalí Aulia. The pedagogical team includes Gabriela Guananga, Otoniel Rojas, Roberto Guerra, Freddy Riofrío and Freddy Macías.
What does the family expect from an educational mobile application?
Gabriela Vargas is part of the support group TGen21 (@tgenveintiuno), that brings together ten mothers of children with Down syndrome, in Guayaquil. They have a business to help with their children’s expenses. When thinking of an app, the first thing you want is customization. “Let him work in stages or by acquired knowledge; each child learns differently, two children of the same age are not always at the same level; you have to work in stages, regardless of age.”
I would also choose a tool that allows children to interact and gives positive feedback for each action taken. “Excellent, very good, you can do better.”
An application should be divided into areas, such as graphomotor skills (strokes), pre-reading, pre-writing. When advancing to literacy, vowels must be differentiated from consonants by means of colors. “And when pointing out the vowels or consonants, emphasize how to say them; Our children have trouble speaking and there is no application that helps them in the area of language”.
the special educator Malena Bonilla de Crespo believes that the application is a viable initiative to support communication and complement human interaction (not as a replacement). “Working on it not with phonetic units, but through thematic units, which provide the student with natural components of daily life.” (F)
Source: Eluniverso
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