BLENDED LEARNING USING MULTITOUCH AND SENSORY RESPONSIVE TECHNOLOGIES IN KINDERGARTEN: THE FUNLAB PROJECT, BUCHAREST, 2014
BLENDED LEARNING USING MULTITOUCH AND SENSORY RESPONSIVE TECHNOLOGIES IN KINDERGARTEN: THE FUNLAB PROJECT, BUCHAREST, 2014

Summary/Abstract: E-learning has been spreading more and more in the Romanian schools in order to support the traditional teaching process. Computer-assisted instruction has many advantages, such as active learning strategies, students’ involvement in learning, and development of more complex technical skills in tune with greater demands for social and societal insertion. However, there are still many controversies related to the phenomenon of human alienation, reduction of basic interpersonal relations, therefore having negative effects upon the emotional-affective dimension of personal and interpersonal relationships. Referring to persons with disabilities, it is commonly agreed that technology is not just their ally, but often the only chance to compensate their natural induced impairments. People with disabilities use technology to communicate, move, fulfill their basic needs, and self-care, overcoming the 'assisted-person' status and gaining more independence and greater control upon the quality of their lives. Still, questions remain: can or will technology ever help them decisively to overcome social barriers, those last challenges to social progress and the emergence of societies showing an inclusive frame of mind? Those 'walls of discrimination' created between ignorance and tolerance can actually be torn down, at some point, so that disability may be addressed as a sample of human diversity and not as a disadvantage? How can we use technology to get a positive answer to this issue sooner? Using these questions for starters, a project dedicated to the training of inclusive mindsets through play and teamwork from the early age has begun in Bucharest at the Special Kindergarten for Hearing-Impaired no. 65 in March 2014. Fun Lab is a project that combines latest learning technologies through sensory stimulation using cutting-edge equipment with problem-solving strategy based on mutual interaction and support in order to solve amusing tasks, which brings persons with sensory disabilities and regular people of all ages together.

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