Select the pace and space

In a classroom of 60, it’s hard for students with special needs to understand every concept. They may take time to learn, depending on their grasping power. Before they can start to break the concept down, the teacher has already moved on to the next one. This affects their confidence in class. Every student’s pace is different and technology provides for that uniqueness. Video lectures give students the power to pause a lecture, rewind it or even select the speed of the explanation. With e-learning apps available on any mobile device, students can choose to study in an environment that suits them best.

Adaptive learning

Adaptive learning, a feature that is transforming the way students learn, is embedded in most e-learning platforms. This can help specially abled students, teachers and parents understand how much they have grasped. They are given a question, depending on their answer, they will be given another question of either a higher difficulty level or a lower difficulty level. The practice questions adapt to the student’s ability. This ensures constant assessment of where the student currently stands and understanding how much ground needs to be covered to get to the next level. This ensures there are no gaps in the student’s understanding.

Interactive and quality content

Teachers trained to teach specially abled children are present in very few classrooms. Technology has opened the doors to quality content and teachers. With a simple video conferencing, children can learn from experts, anywhere in the world. Ed-tech has bought content designed for specially abled students to smartphones and computers. The use of animation in videos have made lectures interactive, rather than just instructive. Children can actually play with objects in 3D and see visual representations of a lecture in the form of videos, diagrams, graphs and images.

Help 24×7

Doubts are very bothersome and students need someone to solve them instantly. It becomes difficult for children with special needs to raise a doubt in front of so many people. They need personal attention and a dedicated ear to hear them out, without any intimidation or judgement. Ed-tech is bringing them support around the clock! Students can ask their doubts on a chat platform and experts in that subject, will patiently explain the concept, until it’s grasped. To make it easier for the students, they don’t even have to type, they can simply send a picture! Now help is just a click away.

Better engagement with gamification

It can be challenging for a teacher to keep all the students engaged in a class. It’s especially difficult to engage students with ADHD or other conditions, that prevent them from concentrating for a prolonged period of time. Gamification is making this task easier with badges, leaderboards, experience points etc. Each time students complete a set of tasks, they are rewarded a badge for their performance, speed, accuracy, consistency and other factors. This is even making learning fun, increasing participation from students with a short attention span. Thus leading to better engagement and participation.

Technology is bringing equal learning opportunities to students with varying capabilities. It’s making learning inclusive.