Need of educational technology tools for cognitive development in intellectually disabled children

Abstract

Research on special education has showed that the use of digital technology for the special need children can help to simplify their educational process. Intellectual disability (ID) is a kind of developmental disorder. ID children need some kind of scaffolding during their learning process. Hence, as part of our ongoing research to design and develop an AR-based educational technology (ET) tool for ID children, we have conducted 3 studies. This paper describes our findings from these studies. Initially we have conducted a pilot study to investigate how Augmented Reality (AR) based educational application would help the mild and moderate ID children in learning English alphabets. Then we have conducted a survey to know the concern of special teachers about technology tools for ID children. In the third study, we have visited some of the special schools in Kerala to know more about the issues pertaining to the ID children. The results of these 3 studies warrant the need to design and develop some kind of AR/VR application for educating ID children.