Video by Matt Haugen, WSU News
PULLMAN, Wash. – Little Jack, fair-haired and bespectacled, stares intently at a learning game on the large video screen in front of him. He rolls his wheelchair forward and touches a colorful cartoon car – to the everlasting delight of his teacher, Megan Itani.
Jack attends Pullman’s preschool class for children with developmental disabilities. He was never motivated to move the wheelchair at school until his classroom got a TAP-It Smart Board – a giant, kid-proof touch pad. Just as noteworthy, said Itani, is that Jack now holds up his head, stays awake in class and responds to the other children.
“Yesterday he was, incredibly, screeching and laughing,” Itani said. “TAP-It is awesome.”
How awesome? Constance Beecher, a post-doctorate researcher at Washington State University, is trying to find out. She’s documenting how TAP-It promotes learning compared to traditional teaching techniques.
Beecher and Professor Darcy Miller have visited the classroom at Sunnyside Elementary since late fall. They observe responses of the children, who have developmental problems such as Down Syndrome and autism. The researchers take detailed notes on three students: Jack, whose mobility problems complicate learning; Tage, who tends to avoid looking at people; and Reed, who likes to interact.
Data collection involves assigning a 1-4, poor-to-good rating to children’s responses. For example, Beecher said, if a teacher asks a child to choose a song by touching the TAP-It screen, the child gets a rating of 4 for touching the screen and making eye contact with the teacher. If he needs prompting, perhaps with a touch on his arm, he’ll get a 3. If the teacher needs to guide his hand to the screen, the rating is 2. A 1 means no response.
A starting point for research
Beecher and Miller hope their research on special education technology will be expanded nationwide.
“This is a pilot study,” said Miller. “We’re establishing what we want to measure and how we want to measure it. Connie and I hope to present our findings at next year’s Council for Exceptional Children conference.”
It was at the council’s 2011 conference that Beecher saw TAP-It and conceived the study. To pay for the $10,000 hardware and supporting programs, she got support from the Pullman Education Foundation and from a WSU College of Education fund designated for early learning research. The smart board’s manufacturer, Ohio-based SmartEd Services, contributed $1,000.
TAP-It is short for Touch Accessible Platform for Interactive Technology. It isn’t the first interactive device designed for children with developmental and physical problems, but it’s unusually tough. Kids can pound on it. Its touch sensitivity level can be changed so that a random tap doesn’t register as a decisive movement.
Plus, said Beecher, it’s easy to move and re-position: “We could even lay it on the floor if we wanted.”
Educational technology has been slow to make its way into early education, much less classrooms for developmentally challenged youngsters. Miller is excited at the idea of bringing teacher education students to see TAP-It in action.
Her former students in WSU’s special education program include Beecher, who earned her Ph.D. last fall, and Itani, who received her WSU master’s degree at the same time. Both are adjunct special education instructors at WSU.
Evidence of success
While the researchers take notes on their computers, Itani is delivering the lessons with constant praise and reinforcement. When she instructs one boy to use TAP-It to move a car onto a cartoon road, he does so and announces “car on.”
“Two-word utterance!” exclaims Itani. “Nice job!”
Putting two words together is big progress for the children, some of whom started the school year knowing five words, she said.
While the researchers gather statistical evidence of TAP-It effectiveness, Itani has tangible evidence already. Medicare was convinced to buy Jack his own wheelchair once he learned to operate one thanks to TAP-It. A little girl who used to hide under the table runs out to the TAP-It when she hears a video lesson begin.
Best of all, Itani said, the TAP-It gets children to interact with each other, something they don’t do when they are working with digital tablets.
When the smart board was removed from the classroom for a while as part of the research, the students asked for it back.
“Even the kids who were nonverbal used sign language to ask for it,” Itani said.
Added Miller: “Some of them cried.”