Computer technology holds huge promise for education and remains mostly untapped, especially for young learners. Kids, including those who face developmental hurdles, catch on better when lessons come alive with vivid, moving pictures and fun games. Computers fit perfectly here, turning learning into an exciting adventure rather than a chore. Just imagine how much easier it becomes to grasp tricky ideas when they jump off the screen and into the imagination. Dive into this tech-powered learning world to find out how it can change the game for those who need it most.
Children like to play on the computer, and the opportunity to work on it serves as an additional incentive to perform tasks, which in other cases could cause negativity. Attention and interest are held much longer.
The use of a computer allows the child to some extent independently evaluate the correctness of the task. Now it is not the teacher who decides whether or not the child acts correctly, but he or she sees the result of his or her actions on the monitor.
Meanwhile, being actively introduced into higher and secondary schools, information technologies have been bypassing preschool education so far. Until recently, in most kindergartens for 25-30 teachers there was at best one or two personal computers, often outdated, which were used only as typewriters.
The share of correctional teachers who are confident in computer skills is unlikely to exceed 25%, and this percentage is even lower among all preschool teachers.
Only in the last few years have computers started to enter kindergartens, and many institutions have the opportunity to equip the workstations of specialists, including correctional teachers, with personal computers.
And the growth of the number inevitably leads to qualitative changes. Among other things, there is a question of effective use of computers in the work of correctional teachers. The first thing that appears in the words “computer technologies” is the use of educational and developmental computer programs.
Everyone knows how many games, puzzles, puzzles and puzzles are in the “backsliding” of teachers and specialists. Sometimes the teacher forgets about a part of them, and the part is hidden so far away that it is not always easy to get.
Developing computer programs, of course, can not completely replace all didactic aids, and should not, but significantly free shelves and shelves in groups can only a few disks of high-quality computer games.
This means making room for role-playing games and giving the child freedom of movement.
Among the developments worthy of attention is a package of specialized computer programs for children with hearing and speech disorders, mental retardation “The World Beyond Your Window”, “Mathematics for Those Who Have a Difficult Time”, etc., created by the Institute of Corrective Pedagogy, and the program “Visible Speech” Russified by them.
There are other products created by different institutes and centers (Institute of New Technologies, Psychological Center “Adalin”, etc.). However, their number is small, and the cost in most cases is such that we cannot yet talk about their mass introduction into the preschool education system.
The widely available educational computer games for children, although they cost much less, are not always methodologically correct. First of all, it concerns literacy programs.
Among the large number of them presented in the shops, the author could not find a game that can be fully used for literacy training in the conditions of speech therapy group. However, the training programs do not exhaust the possibilities of using computer resources in the work of the teacher.
Many teachers do not have enough subject and story pictures and handouts to work with. Sometimes, the picture needed for the lesson is too small or printed among other materials. Scanning images and printing them in almost any format, you can easily solve this problem.
Another solution is to showcase photos and slideshows. Viewing of the created on the computer slide-films and virtual travels (“Walk in the woods”, “Let’s go to the museum”, “At the grandmother’s garden”, “How the grain became a bun”, etc.), accompanied by music, recordings of voices of birds, animals, the frame text, is much more interesting for children, causes their emotional response.
Such information is easier to translate into long-term memory. Creating films does not require a lot of time and in-depth computer knowledge, and it is available to almost all teachers if they wish and have the material resources. Necessary photo and video materials can be found on the Internet or collected independently and with the help of parents.
With a visible abundance of didactic games and manuals on the shelves, it is not always easy for a correctional teacher to find a game that he or she can use in his or her work. Computer resources allow the creation of their own didactic material, taking into account the requirements of the correctional program, the level of training of children and the structure of the violation.
In our kindergarten, we have been successfully using games and aids created with the help of the Paint graphic editor for several years now in our work with children with speech disorders and mental retardation.
Didactic games and lotto games for the development of phonemic hearing, lexico-grammatical system, exercises aimed at preparing for literacy training, the development of higher mental functions – all this can be easily done on the computer.
Exercises for correction of secondary deviations in children with general underdevelopment of speech are selected by me according to the studied lexical themes.
This approach allows me to engage in the development of VPF, interanalyzing connections, fine motor skills in a systematic way, moving from simple to complex, while further developing the lexical and grammatical structure of speech.
With the help of a graphical editor on each lexical theme, different exercises on the development of visual perception, attention (noisy images, “Who hid in the picture?”, “Find differences”, “Find the missing part”, “Where is the shadow of whom?”), memory, visual and effective and verbal and logical thinking (analogies, exceptions, series, etc.) are created.
This also includes exercises on the development of auditory memory, constructive praxis, fine motor skills, and grapho-motor skills attached to the topic under study. It is unrealistic to find such a number of suitable tasks in printed publications. Information technologies, on the other hand, make it possible to create the required volume of didactic material quite quickly.
At the same time, a teacher can set the level of task complexity and lexical material, which will be specified and consolidated, and implement an individual approach to the child in practice, taking into account the area of his or her immediate development.