DIY工具包作为特殊教育学校的教育工具外文文献

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect International Journal of Human Computer Studies journal homepage Designing for appropriation A DIY kit as an educator s tool in special education schools Susanne M kel a Virpi Vellonenb aSchool of Computing University of Eastern Finland Joensuu Finland bSchool of Educational Sciences and Psychology University of Eastern Finland Joensuu Finland A R T I C L E I N F O Keywords Appropriation DIY Special education Educators A B S T R A C T While there has been growing interest in do it yourself DIY technologies in mainstream education there are few studies on their potential use in special education This study explores the possibilities of DIY kits as a special educator s tool and the requirements for such technologies in the context of special education schools We used workshops questionnaires and interviews to investigate how educators in three special education schools ex plored the DIY kit Makey Makey In particular we were interested in fi nding out for which purposes and how educators would appropriate the kit how they perceived its openness and which factors aff ected the appro priation process The results suggest that designing for appropriation can give special educators a more active and creative role in technology adoption and benefi t special education by increasing accessibility motivation and interaction possibilities However the results also inform interaction designers and researchers about issues to be considered when DIY kits are used by both nontechnical users and users who have a wide range of special needs 1 Introduction During recent years there has been a rapid evolution of aff ordable and easy to use hardware programming environments and do it your self DIY toolkits Consequently using digital technologies for de signing and building things no longer requires advanced technical education or skills This has given rise to what has been described as the maker movement Hatch 2014 which is based on the idea that anyone should be able to change the world through innovation and making Through digital fabrication individuals and communities can use digital technologies to design and create physical items and share related knowledge which is predicted to revolutionise both business and education Gershenfeld 2012 Making and digital fabrication off er many possibilities for main stream education and there have been several initiatives to reform kindergarten through grade 12 education to prepare pupils for the challenges of the 21st century In Finland for example the renewed national core curriculum emphasises extensive multidisciplinary skills the role of information and communication technology ICT in learning environments and pupils as active participants in society and in the development of learning environments FNBE 2016 In Den mark making and digital fabrication have been promoted to schools as ways to learn skills related to programming design thinking complex problem solving and digital literacy B dker et al 2017 Hjorth et al 2016 The DIY approach has also been seen as one way to engage participants in the learning process and challenge what is counted as learning Halverson Lidstr m Liu et al 2013 Tintarev et al 2016 People with autism spectrum disorders for example can benefi t from adaptable learning environments that meet their needs and support their strengths and activity e g Vellonen et al 2015 Wass Vellonen et al 2015 Yet educators have found many technologies either diffi cult to adapt or entirely unsuitable for specifi c learning purposes or pupils Vellonen Received in revised form 14 May 2018 Accepted 15 May 2018 Corresponding author E mail addresses susanne makela S M kel virpi vellonen uef fi V Vellonen International Journal of Human Computer Studies 118 2018 14 23 Available online 16 May 2018 1071 5819 2018 Elsevier Ltd All rights reserved T that can hinder the adoption of ICT in special education include edu cators insuffi cient ICT skills and knowledge educators attitudes to wards technologies poor user instructions high cost of technologies and schools lack of resources for maintenance technical support and training Brodin Lee Okolo Vellonen that is designing technologies that are intentionally left open for users to adapt for diff erent purposes Tchounikine 2016 Digital DIY kits that provide users with means to build things without limiting the results to specifi c outcomes can be seen as extreme ex amples of such a design approach Designing DIY kits for educators could alleviate the challenges of technology adoption in special edu cation contexts where cost is an issue and the wide range of pupils needs and learning goals put high demands on the adaptability of technology Moreover DIY kits would provide educators with more possibilities for infl uencing the digitalisation of education which has beenfoundtopromoteteachers technologyuse Tanhua Piiroinen et al 2016 The study presented in this paper explored the potential and lim itations of designing for appropriation in special education by in troducing a DIY kit to special education schools The goal of the study was to inform interaction designers and HCI researchers about issues that need to be considered when designing for appropriation in a setting in which nontechnical people are appropriating technologies for users with special needs 2 Background and related work In this section we discuss appropriation in HCI and its relevance to special education In addition we introduce the Makey Makey DIY kit and previous research on DIY kits for users with special needs Finally we discuss the starting points and research questions of our study 2 1 Appropriation The concept of a user has been central to HCI and its development has refl ected the changes in the theoretical and methodological back ground of HCI In early human factors research a user was represented as a passive individual a system component with certain character istics later it was argued that users should rather be seen as autono mous and active agents who want to accomplish tasks and make sense of their world Bannon 1991 More recent discussions in HCI have further emphasised users active role describing them as makers craf ters and hackers rather than simply users of technology Roedl et al 2015 That users do not merely use but also adapt technologies during use has been recognised in HCI for many years Dourish 2003 defi ned appropriation as ongoing incremental adaptation of interactive tech nologies that is inherent to the emergence of shared practice Carroll et al 2003 describe appropriation as a three level process during which a technology transforms from technology as designed into technology in use Their model describes how during 1 the fi rst en counter with a piece of technology users make initial judgements about it which lead to either nonappropriation users are not interested in the technology or exploration of technology Factors such as cost famil iarity or perceived usefulness can act as attractors or repellants at this level If users decide to 2 explore technology they make a deeper evaluation of it through use Again there are factors that aff ect whether the exploration ends in disappropriation abandoning technology or users continued appropriation potentially resulting in users 3 in tegrating technology into their everyday practices While appropriation has been used to describe small adaptations made by users it can also refer to more substantial conversion from the original design According to Dourish 2003 for example appropria tion covers customisation of technology but also making use of tech nology for purposes it was not originally designed for Dix 2007 sees such an improvisation as a sign that users understand and are com fortable enough with a piece of technology to make it their own In this sense appropriation can be seen as making it is not just about changing something in a technology or selecting between given options but about taking control over the digital medium and using it for one s own goals Cermak Sassenrath for ex ample by increasing their sense of ownership or by giving them more possibilities for self expression The underlying assumptions seem to be that users are capable of and interested in solving problems or ex pressing themselves through technologies if given an opportunity to do so In addition the previous studies have often downplayed legal economic and physical constraints that can restrict the potential social change associated with appropriation and making Roedl et al 2015 2 2 DIY kits for users with special needs In recent years many DIY toolkits and platforms have become available These include easy to use programming environments small and low cost computers such as Raspberry Pi and BBC micro bit 3D printers for personal and educational use and online communities for sharing ideas and instructions While such resources have made design and development of technologies possible for people who are not computer experts most DIY kits still require some technical knowledge and programming skills One exception to this standard is Makey Makey JoyLabz 2016 which is an invention kit intended for a wide range of users such as children artists educators designers and engineers ibid Makey Makey MM has simple but powerful functionality it can be used to make any physical object or living being act like a computer key Makey Makey can be used with programming environments like Scratch but also with any existing applications that can be controlled with a key board As such MM off ers opportunities for nontechnical people to build physical interfaces without having to do any programming at all The recognition of key presses in MM is based on resistive sensing in which two wires leave from the board one to the user and one to the physical object that is used to sense a touch Fig 1 Whenever a touch is registered MM transmits a predefi ned key press to the computer Several objects can be attached to MM in this way using the wires with alligator clips included in the kit S M kel V VellonenInternational Journal of Human Computer Studies 118 2018 14 23 15 In mainstream education MM has been used by teachers and pupils for school projects in which pupils are usually actively involved in designing and building interactive setups with MM for examples and lesson plans see JoyLabz 2016 In special education MM has been used to design and develop solutions for pupils with special needs Hamidi et al 2015 for example used MM to develop an aff ordable communication board for users who had challenges in speech or com munication and Lin and Chang 2014 implemented a system that aimed at motivating children with cerebral palsy to do physical activ ities In another project instructed by Heck 2015 high school students used MM in a computing class to create assistive technologies for pupils with special needs In the examples mentioned above educators did not use MM to develop solutions for special education There are however other studies of nontechnical people developing assistive technologies for people with disabilities that have highlighted some of the challenges involved in such a design setting Hook et al 2014 for example studied assistive technologies created for children with disabilities by their family members friends and caregivers The makers felt that they did not have enough skills confi dence and time and there were also problems with the durability and reliability of created items ibid In another study by Moraiti et al 2015 occupational therapists suc cessfully used a DIY kit that allowed them to turn soft everyday objects into controllers that their clients could use during therapy Moraiti et al 2015 suggest that DIY kits should support building for a wide variety of client needs augmenting everyday objects in simple ways and pro viding not just input but meaningful feedback They also suggest an online platform for sharing instructions and ready made templates to be used by therapists 2 3 Exploring the possibilities of appropriation in special education Teachers play a signifi cant role in how technologies are used with and applied for various learners and learning environments e g Tanhua Piiroinen et al 2016 Our research was motivated by the idea that special education staff could have a more active and creative role when applying ICT to support pupils learning Regarding technology appropriation in an educational context it has been found that teachers tend to apply technologies in an ad hoc way Hatton 2000 The con cept of bricolage has been used in many studies to indicate how teachers appropriate technology e g Derboven et al 2017 Bricolage refers to the ways in which people learn by improvising around materials and to the creative exploration of the practices and technologies needed to achieve an educational goal as Sharples et al 2014 p 35 have defi ned it Innovations in education are developed from the available resources and at the classroom level a lesson is created out of the educational materials classroom practices and the skills of the pupils ibid In special education both the strengths and needs vary con siderably between pupils which emphasises the need for continuous appropriation by the educators Thus designing for appropriation in special education would mean designing technologies that would both leave enough open space and support educators when they are exploring the technologies and ma terials available to support learning by pupils with very individual strengths and special needs Such an approach could advance tech nology adoption in special education schools in many ways Through appropriation educators could become less dependent on technology experts and gain more control over what kinds of technologies they use In addition increased possibilities for educators to make technologies their own could potentially lead to improved motivation and con fi dence in technology use In our study we focused on special education teachers and school assistants and to what extent and how they could appropriate MM in special education schools where pupils have multiple special needs We chose MM as an example of a DIY kit because it is aff ordable provides considerable fl exibility for appropriation without being complicated and does not require any programming skills This choice was con fi rmed prior to the study by introducing MM during a class to ap proximately one hundred pre service special education teachers who then tried out MM in small groups All of the groups were able to build an MM setup and use it with little instruction in about fi fteen minutes Furthermore MM raised a lot of interest and inspired many ideas for how it could be used in special education The students response was consistent with our own initial impressions of MM as having signifi cant potential for special education which encouraged us to continue with a more comprehensive study of MM in special education schools From a design point of view the relevant questions include whether leaving more room for appropriation in educational technologies could help educators to build individualised solutions to support learning by pupils who have a wide range of special needs and what kinds of technologies could promote such a change Our research questions were as follows 1 In which ways can designing for appropriation support teaching in special education 2 How do educators perceive and value the possibility of appropria tion in the context of special education 3 Which factors can support or hinder the appropriation of DIY kits in special education schools 3 Methodology The study was carried out in three special education schools In this section we will introduce the schools as a research context and describe how we collected and analysed the data for the study 3 1 Research context To understand the context of special education schools as social physical and technological environment in which MM would be used we fi rst made two day visits to each school During the visits we ob served the pupils and daily routines at the school discussed with tea chers and school assistants and took notes and photographs The data collected during these activities informed the design of interview questions and supported interpretation of the results as we could relate and compare what interviewees were saying to our observations at schools The teachers and school assistants worked with pupils who were provided with special support In Finland there are three levels of support for learning and school attendance in basic education general Fig 1 An example of a basic Makey Makey setup in which a user has one hand connected to Earth and a spoon is touched with the other hand to enter a keypress S M kel V VellonenInternational Journal of Human Computer Studies 118 2018 14 23 16 intensifi ed and special support FNAE 2018 FNBE 2016 Special support is based on an extensive assessment a pedagogical statement a decision on special support made by the education provider and an individual education plan drawn up for the pupil ibid Multi professional cooperation and cooperation with the pupil and the guardian are signifi cant for identifying the pupil s needs for support and in planning and implementing support for the pupil FNBE 2016 At this level instruction and support can be provided in various settings see e g Bj rn et al 2016 In this particular case the pupils receiving special support were provided with instruction in special education schools The schools were relatively small with fewer than fi fty pupils in each Pupils were divided into small groups of about six pupils each group having their own classroom one special education teacher and four to fi ve school assistants The pupils special needs were multiple and relating to for example intellectual disability and autism spectrum disorders The pupils belonged within the scope of extended compulsory education see FNBE 2016 MEC 2018 and thus the pupil