Innovation Profile 062

Each bit of success increases the engagement of a learner

Young learners and those with learning difficulties need to be motivated and engaged with learning, just as much as older students. The bits of success needed for this may be very small but they are vitally important.

Computers are excellent at providing frameworks for successful progress in creativity - if the right software is used. Tools for workers are designed to increase production. Tools designed for learners increase learning.

An extremely good example of this is Clicker from Crick software, http://www.cricksoft.com. It is very widely used to introduce even very young children to creative writing. It is also much respected for use with children who have quite severe learning difficulties and disabilities.

Many of our innovation profiles have discussed how multimedia resources and presentations are much richer for learning than text. The same is true - probably more so - when a child is just starting reading and writing. Clicker can link words with pictures, animations and speech to make it easy to construct sentences. All the words can be spoken, linking the child's creative writing to their spoken language. This overcomes any reading difficulties they may have, in selecting words to use.

Digital images, taken with a digital camera, can now be incorporated. This can help the child create an emotional link between their thoughts and their writing.

Of course like all good tools, Clicker is useable in many languages. Teachers can create word sets themselves, or use any of the hundreds of word sets available free. Speech engines are available for French, German, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish and some other languages.

There is a careful balance that educators must find. It can be helpful for children to learn to use professional work tools from an early age. Young people are often better than their teachers at learning how to do this. But there is also a need for tools designed specially for learning, based on educational principles.

If we help young children to gain early success in releasing their creativity and in the skills to express it, they will make much more effective use of work tools when they progress to them.

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If you know of examples of innovative use of ICT-for-learning that others would be interested in, please email innovations@eep-edu.org

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