Lighting the way through the home: development of early braille literacy

Emergent braille literacy is the earliest phase of language development where children, from infancy, are exposed to 'direct, repeated and meaningful interactions with braille literacy materials and events' (Rex, Koenig, Wormsley, & Baker, 1995, p.10). Activities such as shared reading of tactile books, scribbling on the braille machine, joint engagement in nursery rhymes, songs and chants help infants acquire cognitive concepts and develop physical skills to engage in braille. The process leads to the early development of literacy concepts including speaking, listening,reading and writing, as a foundation for braille literacy (Drezek, 1999)

Research into literacy and technology in primary classrooms: an exploration of understandings generated by recent studies

Whilst much has been written about the implications for ‘literacy’ for practices surrounding digital technologies (Gee, 2000a; Luke and Carrington, 2002; Snyder, 1998), there has been surprisingly little research investigating new literacies in primary classrooms (Andrews, 2003; Labbo and Reinking, 2003: Lankshear and Knobel, 2003). This review examines the kinds of understandings that have been generated through studies of primary literacy and technology reported during the period 2000-2006. It uses Green’s distinction between ‘operational’, ‘cultural’ and ‘critical’ dimensions of primary literacy (Lankshear and Bigum, 1999; Snyder, 2001) to investigate the focus and methodology of 38 empirical studies. It explores ways in which research may be informed by assumptions and practices associated with print literacy, but also highlights the kinds of studies which are beginning to investigate the implications of digital texts for primary education. The paper concludes by arguing for further ethnographic and phenomenological studies of classroom literacy practices in order to explore the complex contexts which surround and are mediated by digital texts

Exploring Inclusive Design and Digital Humanities: Enabling Bilingual Digital Narratives for Deaf Children

The collaboration between designers and digital humanists has indeed gained increasing significance in crafting effective projects, with design serving as a centralizing force in the realm of digital humanities by establishing interfaces for individuals to engage with technological resources. Therefore, design's methodological practices, encompassing various research and experiential facets, play a pivotal role in enhancing the usability and accessibility of digital resources within the social sphere. This study aims to expand the discourse on the characteristics and potential of the interplay between inclusive design and digital humanities practices, with a specific focus on the development of bilingual digital narratives (utilizing Brazilian Sign Language and Portuguese). The research adopts a collaborative, qualitative approach, encompassing processes of evaluation, validation, and enhancement. Digital visual narratives are presented as a facilitating tool for integrating LIBRAS and Portuguese, thereby aiding in language acquisition for deaf children. The article contributes to the discussion of the humanistic approach to design, emphasizing the values of empathy, ethics, and social responsibility in the creation of inclusive and accessible projects

Reading Graphic Design in Cultural Context

Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 2019.Reading Graphic Design: •Is a much needed examination of graphic design in the expanded field •Forms an introduction to writing critically about graphic design through twelve chapters providing exemplary analyses of the semantic richness of the selected case studies •Goes beyond aesthetic judgments to explore how graphic design and illustration function as fields of industry and commerce in the West •Will inform, challenge and entertain undergraduate students of graphic design internationall

Young children drawing together on the iPad versus paper: How collaborative creativity is shaped by different semiotic resources

Facilitating collaborative creativity among children involves offering material resources that support collaborative and creative interactions. Popular views of tablets, such as the iPad, suggest that they are better suited to solitary game-playing or video-watching than to collaborative open-ended tasks. I explore this further through a social semiotic lens, applying the concepts of ‘semiotic resources’ and ‘affordances’ to develop a more nuanced understanding of what tablets have to offer in relation to children’s collaborative creativity. Through this lens, I compare observations of six pairs of 5-6 year old children engaged in a collaborative drawing task completed either on paper or on the iPad. I apply a thematic analysis to the children’s dialogue across 25 episodes (15 iPad, 10 paper) and the visual dimensions of their 41 drawings (23 iPad, 18 paper), and develop three interwoven themes: 1) attitudes to space, 2) momentum of the line and 3) pathways to representation. For each of these themes, I explore how the affordances of the iPad and/or the particular app feed into these aspects of the drawing process and the implications of this for children’s collaborative creativity. The analysis suggests that drawing on the iPad can be more responsive and less subject to personal planning than drawing on paper. I suggest that this difference is shaped by physical properties such as the touch-screen interface, but also emerges as a result of the cultural investment in drawing on paper as a form of ‘self-expression’, a notion that works to limit exploratory and collaborative engagement with the resources. Since participants were noticeably open to exploring new ideas together while drawing on the iPad, I argue that we need to reassess the potentials of touch-screen tablets to support tasks of collaborative creativity in educational contexts

The European dimension in picture books

This thesis considers European picture books and how they can be used by trainee teachers in upper primary classrooms. It is divided into two parts. Part One, Chapters 1-4, develops a theoretical rationale for creating picture book material which will both implement a European dimension in education and meet the requirements of the 1995 and 1997 National Curricula for English in England. Chapter One explains the notion of a European dimension in Education; Chapter Two traces European influences on the picture book since the time of Comenius, the first picture book creator; Chapter Three discusses the 'travelability' of picture books plus their role within the learning process; and Chapter Four concludes the 6rst part of the thesis, with a literature review, by drawing the strands of the first three chapters together to create a rationale for using European picture books at Key Stage Two. Part Two, Chapters 5-8, presents the study which was devised to put this rationale into practice for initial teacher training. It establishes the core questions of the thesis; Which books might form a European collection? How can such a collection of picture books facilitate a European dimension in primary education? How can this collection enable trainee teachers to implement a European dimension at Key Stage Two of the National Curriculum for English? Chapter Five outlines the development of the European Picture Book Collection (EPBC); Chapter Six presents a brief overview of semiotic, discourse and text analysis methodologies, suggesting why a Semiotic Text Analysis (STA) is appropriate for this research; Chapter Seven applies the STA to the EPBC; and Chapter Eight explores, through a number of activities, how trainee teachers might use the EPBC materials to implement a European dimension whilst meeting National Curriculum requirements

CHILDREN\u27S LETTER LEARNING: THE EFFECT OF MANIPULATING VISUAL COMPLEXITY ON CHILDREN\u27S LETTER LEARNING

As a growing presence in homes and schools, technology plays an important role in the way that children learn in their environment. The early integration of technology within education reflects the promise of computer-based educational tools to facilitate early learning in children (Grant, Wood, Gottardo, Evans, Phillips, & Savage, 2012). Young learners are reported to be challenged with high levels of distractibility that can hinder their ability to learn in particular conditions and contexts (Fisher, Godwin, & Seltman, 2014). This can be a problem when considering that educational materials are often designed to be elaborate to keep young learners interested. For this reason, the present study sought to determine the effect of visually “busy” versus visually “simpler” backgrounds during a video presentation meant to encourage the development of alphabetic knowledge. The participants recruited for this study included 20 preschoolers, 20 children in grade two, and 32 undergraduate students. Participants were presented with unfamiliar letter shapes (Arabic and Hebrew letters) in each of the two video contexts (busy and simpler). In order to test for differences in information retention and possible learning between the two displays, a forced-choice recognition task was used to compare between the two types of screens. To take into account individual differences, participants or their parents completed family literacy and technology use questionnaires, as well as were evaluated on literacy and vocabulary measures. Analyses included correlational analysis, descriptive statistics and multivariate analyses of variance. There was a main effect of age on performance overall. However, there were no significant differences between performance on the simpler and busy conditions for each age group. Lastly, literacy skill, vocabulary skill and technology use did not show significant relationships with performance on the letter learning task

Designing multiplayer games to facilitate emergent social behaviours online

This paper discusses an exploratory case study of the design of games that facilitate spontaneous social interaction and group behaviours among distributed individuals, based largely on symbolic presence 'state' changes. We present the principles guiding the design of our game environment: presence as a symbolic phenomenon, the importance of good visualization and the potential for spontaneous self-organization among groups of people. Our game environment, comprising a family of multiplayer 'bumper-car' style games, is described, followed by a discussion of lessons learned from observing users of the environment. Finally, we reconsider and extend our design principles in light of our observations

A systematic review of pedagogical approaches that can effectively include children with special educational needs in mainstream classrooms with a particular focus on peer group interactive approaches

The broad background to this review is a long history of concepts of special pupils and special education, and a faith in special pedagogical approaches. The rise of inclusive schools and some important critiques of special pedagogy (e.g. Hart, 1996; Norwich and Lewis, 2001; Thomas and Loxley, 2001) have raised the profile of teaching approaches that ordinary teachers can and do use to include children with special educational needs in mainstream classrooms. Inclusive education itself is increasingly conceived as being about the quality of learning and participation that goes on in inclusive schools rather than simplistic matters of where children are place