Building hybrid interfaces to increase interaction with young children and children with special needs

Abstract

Young children as well as children with special educational needs learn from their environment with social, emotional and physical stimuli. In this context, educational resources and teaching strategies play a main role for them in order to understand the new information. This paper describes the experience of building hybrid interfaces that combine technology with traditional educational resources. A total of 60 teachers divided in two groups completed some tasks which consisted of generating new educative resources with tecnology. Through Design Thinking methodology, teachers designed three hybrid interfaces: 1. Interactive books, combining traditional fairy tales books with mobile devices, where QR codes and NFC tags give life to the stories; 2. Educational Board Games, where augmented reality markers give an extra information to the players; 3. Tangible educational resources, which integrate Makey-Makey device and Scratch with fruit, clay, aluminum foil or water to build laboratory.