Author(s)

Ana Lúcia Manrique¹, Eliana Vianna Brito Kozma², Ely Antonio Tadeu Dirani³, Meire Luci da Silva⁴, Annie France Frere⁵

¹Mathematics Education Program, PUC-SP, Sao Paulo, Brazil.
²Master Degree in Applied Linguistics, UNITAU, Sao Paulo, Brazil.
³Department of Engineering, PUC-SP, Sao Paulo, Brazil.
⁴Department of Physical Therapy and Occupational Therapy, UNESP, Sao Paulo, Brazil.
⁵Department of Engineering, UBC, Sao Paulo, Brazil.

Many children have special difficulties to interact with their counterparts, but use tablets and smartphones with resourcefulness. Cards with graphic symbols are very useful to assist communication. However, the teacher who works in a classroom with forty students in Brazil does not have time to train the special student to properly use this alternative means of communication. Therefore, this research developed and tested an application installed on a smartphone, which identified the communication card and verbalized its meaning, repeating this action as often as necessary without teacher intervention. It also allows one to test the knowledge of students. The system is based on a web application with source code developed by Google and electromagnetic sensors fixed on the cards. The functionality test showed good performance and usability and may be useful in the training of children with communication difficulties.

ICT, Multiliteracy, Special Education, PECS, Autism Spectrum Disorder

Manrique, A. , Brito Kozma, E. , Tadeu Dirani, E. , da Silva, M. and Frere, A. (2016) ICTs in the Classroom, Multiliteracy and Special Education: A Required Interface. Creative Education, 7, 963-970. doi: 10.4236/ce.2016.77100.