What is the intended idea/concept behind the proposed project?
To help parents of children with learning difficulties, manage their child’s progression through education by creating an educational profile of the child’s behaviour and performance at home and in school.
The output of the project will assist with the correct diagnosis of learning difficulties and will increase communication between parents, teachers and specialists to more successfully address specific problems. It will also help the large amount of children with special educational needs that are currently educated in mainstream schools as opposed to specialist schools.
The project will enable the parent to be the main source of data and information with the potential to collect data from the child themselves. Using a balanced amount of quantitative and qualitative data to create an accurate profile of the child’s learning difficulties, behaviour and progress in school and at home.
The output will be able to work on a number of devices to suit the parents accessibility needs.
Describe the intended audience:
The intended audience are parents, but more specifically parents who believe that their child may require extra attention in school due to the diagnosis of a learning disability. However in the future the output could be opened up to be used by teachers, doctors and other specialists.
Teachers will be able to use the output to increase communication with parents, which will lead to a greater understanding of the child’s needs in school.
Doctors and specialists will be able to use the output to develop a better diagnosis of the child’s specific problems and come up with more accurate ways of helping them.
The following assumptions about the identified target can be made:
– The user will have one or more children with a learning disability, ranging from moderate to severe.
– The final product will have to appeal to both male and female parents, so the functionality must be gender neutral.
– They will have some background knowledge and information regarding learning difficulties including their features, attributes and the diagnosis of said learning difficulty.
– They will have access to the internet and atleast one digital device at home and on the go.
Justify the idea/concept in terms of needs for its existence:
In the Special Educational Needs code of practice (SEN Code) it states as a general principle that ‘Parents have a vital role to play in supporting their children’s education’ as ‘they have unique strengths, knowledge and experience to contribute to the shared view of a child’s needs and the best ways for supporting them.’ It also states that communication between teachers, parents and specialists is vital in tending to the needs of children with learning difficulties. Therefore there is a need for this concept in that it will help bridge the communication gap between parents, teachers and specialists and will also help to get parents more involved in their child’s education.
There are an estimated ‘286,000 children (18,000 boys, 106,000 girls) age 0-17 in the UK with a learning disability.’ And out of those ‘89% of children with moderate learning difficulty, 24% of children with severe learning difficulty and 18% of children with profound multiple learning difficulty’ are being educated in mainstream schools. Because of this overwhelming amount of children with learning disabilities and the lack of specialist schools to educate them, it is becoming increasingly more important for adults to be more personally involved in their children’s education and progress.
Parents believe that the current system is not helping their children adequately. They are concerned about the inconsistencies in the identification of SEN and getting fair access to high quality services to meet their children’s needs. The Ofsted Special Educational Needs and Disability Review of 2010 found widespread weakness in the quality of what was provided for children with SEN and evidence that the current system contributes to these problems. Schools often used low attainment and slow progress as indicators for SEN. Inspectors saw that schools identified students as having SEN when their needs were not different from other students. Underachieving students and low expectations of the pupils led to misidentification’s of SEN. The project will help concerned parents to take their child’s education into their own hands and give them some support that they are not receiving from the system. It could also in the future lead to developing a better system of diagnosis for children with learning difficulties with fewer inconsistencies.
How will this project extend your creative and technical skills?
Creatively this project will be a challenge, as I will have to come up with a theme that is both pleasant and aesthetic to use to prevent the input of data becoming a chore for the parents, but also intuitive and professional enough to be trusted with the personal information of children. The technical side of the project will be a learning curve that will form a significant amount of the initial planning, research and development. This is due to the project having the potential to function on a number of platforms and devices, the optimum platform will have to be researched to achieve the best results.
This project will also improve my ability to rationalise and prioritise information based on its relevance and importance, as qualitive vs quantitative data will be a significant problem in this project.
Outline how the practical work will be carried out by you and the time-scales involved for each task:
Research and Development:
(Weeks 1 to 4)
– Researching learning difficulties and the best way to organise and collect information for the best results
– Researching the audience to come up with an appropriate art direction of braning and logos
– Identifying which technology/paltform should be used for maximum accessibility and will be appropriate for the audience
Production:
(Week 5-9)
– Creating potential prototypes that correspond to the outcome of the research from weeks 1 – 4
– Defining the projects art direction through branding and logos
Testing/Feedback
(Week 10-12)
– Prototype to be tested by users, preferably by the target audience
– Collect and analyse feedback
– Reflect on feedback collected to make improvements to the project
This is the structure of practical work that I will attempt to follow, however unforseen circumstances in the future may potentially change this.
What other work is relevant to your project?
Aprendicies Visuales EYA project
http://www.aprendicesvisuales.org/en/ Aprendices Visuales is a non-profit organization whose aims is to facilitate children with autism the access to the tools they need in order to develop at their full potential, through: research, creation of visual materials and social awareness.
http://www.bild.org.uk BILD is the British Institute of Learning Disabilities. We want people with learning disabilities to be valued equally, participate fully in their communities and be treated with dignity and respect.
http://www.reachuk.org Reach offer classes to support adults with learning disabilities to reach beyond what they expect of themselves and what other people expect.
https://www.classdojo.com ClassDojo’s mission is to reinvent classrooms by bringing teachers, students and parents closer together. Teachers use ClassDojo is a communication platform to encourage students, and get parents engaged too. Classrooms become positive places – which means there’s no more ‘classroom management’.
List any critical texts that are relevant to your conceptual intentions:
– 2001 Special Educational Needs Code of Practice. http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20130401151715/https://www.education.gov.uk/publications/eorderingdownload/dfes%200581%20200mig2228.pdf
– 2015 FitzRoy, An insight into the pressures facing parents of people with learning disabilities. http://www.fitzroy.org/wp-content/uploads/Who-will-care-after-im-gone.pdf
– Thompson, J. (2010) The essential guide to understanding special educational needs: Practical skills for teachers. 1st edition. Harlow, England: Longman Pub. Group.
– 2010 Ofsted, The special educational needs and disability review. https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/413814/Special_education_needs_and_disability_review.pdf