Videogames For Learning Children With Dyslexia

Videogames for learning children with dyslexia

Introduction

At present, video games are an important part in the lives of young people, due to their interactive, enveloping and striking content taken a significant place in their daily lives, managing to get involved in a world completely away from reality every time they use them. Much of what has been investigated so far has focused on evaluating the negative effects of video game (for example, it induces aggressive attitudes and behaviors, addiction, etc.). However, video games can be an excellent instrument when used for didactic purposes and for people with learning difficulties.

Dyslexia is a significant difficulty with the acquisition of reading, writing and speech, which can be caused by a combination of phonological deficit, auditory and/or visual processing. In turn, dyslexia can be accompanied by problems in working memory, syntactic skills and processing speed.

At school many children learn to read without any difficulty, but Silvana Bernachi, president of Adapta, groups parents of children with dyslexia and ADHD, provides figures and curious data on this disorder: “Dyslexia affects 15% of the populationor 700 million people in the world. In a class of 20 students we will find three or four children with dyslexia. This difficulty causes 40% of school failure worldwide ”.  

One of the main difficulties that teachers stumble upon with these students with reading problems is that they cannot carry out individualized and intensive care in the classroom.

Early detection will be one of the objectives to pursue and this implies detecting students at high risk of presenting this problem. In this way, identified students can be trained before the deficit prevents the acquisition of reading ability, being possible to prevent many of the failures in this area, and in learning in general. In this sense, we should not wait for these deficits to strengthen, since we risk these children to continue their reading difficulty, even in adult life.

This work proposes to develop a video game using augmented reality technology to stimulate reading in children with dyslexic disorders, offers to be highly motivating, friendly and entertaining for those children with specific learning difficulties supporting to solve their training problems.

Problem

Background

During the last years the use of ICT in the educational area is being taken into account, but there is still enough because teachers and students do not yet have adequate software or have not received the necessary training to use the material

Learning is different when it goes hand in hand with new technologies, since learning occurs to the extent that the individual feels involved and in this regard is that the environment mediated by technologies causes learning processes, it is not technologybut didactic use, combined with practice those that make new technologies excellent in education

In addition, augmented reality is increasingly present in various areas of knowledge, showing the versatility and possibilities that this technology presents., Students have the opportunity to explore the environment that surrounds them differently and enjoy an interactive and enriching learning process. To do this, it combines real world images with other virtual to create an environment full of information that includes 3D objects, audios, videos, complementary information, etc.

There is currently a wide variety of video game for dyslexic children but there are few who develop new intervention alternatives that can help children in a more fun way and with a greater commitment for their part as technologies with augmented reality is thus qur “fostering evenLearning for Children with Dyslexia in Europe by providing easy-to-e -use virtual and/or augmented reality tools and guidelines (Fordys-Var) ”, is a project coordinated by the University of Burgos where augmented reality (RA) will become aAllied for children with dyslexia and improve learning experience. The activities that are developed will be approximated to real life contexts and will also take place in a dynamic, multisensory, controlled and safe environment.

Similar jobs

Conducting a study on existing video games in the global market focused on improving learning in dyslexic children, the following were found:

Jellys

Jellys is a video game, focused on rhythm and visual attention, which teaches children to take time to improve the rhythm and look for differences in images to improve visual attention and improve the reading comprehension of children with dyslexia. The tool has been designed by Mikel Ostiz as part of the doctoral thesis he performs in the ‘Mente-Cerebro’ group of the Culture and Society Institute (ICS) of the University of Navarra;the Basque Center on Cognition, Brain and Language (BCBL);And the University of Vic, thanks to a scholarship of the social work "La Caixa".

Dytective

The Spanish researcher Luz Rello, with the collaboration of Samsung, has developed a free application that allows you to quickly identify if a child has dyslexia, Dytetive is a game that aims to identify and improve the linguistic skills and attention of people with dyslexia. The exercises are scientifically designed and aimed at all ages from three years of age.

42.000 games that are customized based on 24 cognitive skills aimed at both weaknesses and cognitive strengths

Pipiña

Pipiña. The magic of the game awakens in children enthusiasm and pleasure for reading. Pipiña is a Uruguayan brand that offers diverse and innovative work tools, aiming to optimize interventions in children with difficulties in learning reading and writing (dyslexic and inharily readers).

GALEXIA

Galexia is an educational game to improve dyslexia, reading fluidity and free speech difficulties for people of all ages: children and adults. Galexia is an application that supports an intervention program, based on evidence and scientifically validated (Serrano et al., 2012). The application has been endorsed in schools by teachers and experts in dyslexia, speech therapy and education, with good results. In Google Play obtains a qualification of 4.7 by users who have downloaded it 358 times.

Finally, through a review of the theses carried out in the computer career of the Universidad Mayor de San Andrés, there were no research that is related to the subject under study, however there are intelligent support tutors for learning problems in dyslexic children implemented inThe university as being:

• Intelligent tutor Arcospxia as support for children with dyslexia problems (Marcelo Choqueticlla, Rocío 2015)
• Intelligent Support System to Visoespacial and Adifonological Learning for children from 4 to 7 years with dyslexia (Huancani Marca, Maria Isabel 2012)
• Intelligent tutor for support for teaching reading-writing in children from 6 to 9 years with dyslexia under the Android platform (Patzi Fernandez, Jaqueline Ximena 2015)

List of problems

• There is no alternative, didactic and local tool that motivates children to reading and writing
• The teaching-learning development of reading and writing is difficult for teachers and students.
• There is a delay in learning in addition to low school performance as a result of dyslexia disorders
• The benefits of video games in education are not used

Problem formulation

How can reading and writing be encouraged in addition to improving cognitive processes in children who present learning difficulties?

Objectives

General objective

Develop, implement and design an interactive video game with augmented reality, as support to improve reading and writing in dyslexic children.

Specific objectives

• Establish technological and pedagogical methods in the development of the video game
• Create the architecture for the operation of the video game
• Design a friendly and entertaining user interface
• Design the characters and 3D scenarios that will be presented by augmented reality.
• Evaluate the video game and verify its functionality through tests performed on students.
• Develop a video game that contributes to the creation of more educational video games.

Hypothesis

A video game based on augmented reality technology will increase the level of learning and writing learning in primary schools in an age range of 7 to 11 years, applying the concept of literacy cards.

Justifications

Social

In the social field, children in reading and writing learning stage achieve the greatest benefit since they can have didactic, entertaining and motivating material that will help reduce training difficulties.

Thus, it should also be taken into account that the teaching-learning process of reading and writing is an important process that not only requires the interest in teaching of teachers but also the dedication to learn from each student. In this way both parties benefit because they have the didactic material that will facilitate them in the arduous learning process.

Economic

In the social field when the video game is used in the classroom, it will not be needed that each student has a mobile device individually, groups can be formed or simply in shifts for students to perform the activity.

It should be taken into account that access to a mobile device is more common, unlike years ago that was considered luxurious objects, therefore they are considered economically accessible devices.

Technological

The ATT reports that there are more than 11.4 million mobile lines registered in the 2018 management. The trend is ascending in the number of mobile devices also said study makes a comparison with 2006 in which only two out of 10 people had a cell phone

For the video game to work it will be necessary to have a smartphone or a mid -range tablet with an operating system.

Scientific

The impact that this work can have in a scientific way will be due to the fact that it forms interests of computer sciences and education that can be studied and applied to the creation of more educational tools and didactic material supported by ICT for the benefit ofstudents and teachers.