Classroom-Based Assistive Technology: Collective Use of Interactive Visual Schedules by Students with Autism
“The vSked system provides interfaces for creating, facilitating, and viewing progress of classroom activities based around an interactive visual schedule. They can also recognize particular concepts with which particular students consistently struggle. ”
(Badioze Zaman et al., 2011)
This journal explores the uses of a programme called Vsked and how it can be used within an SEN educational setting to combine three of the crucial necessities of day to day life needed as a student with ASD (Autistic spectrum disorder). Completing tasks, managing daily routines, and being able to engage in social interactions is something that students with ASD can find highly challenging on a daily basis.
- Use of VSked reduced the number of prompts given by teachers, paraprofessionals, and aides.
- Use of VSked improved transition times. In our quantitative analysis, transition time from one activity to another was reduced by 61%.
- New community practices emerged that promoted more social awareness.
- Classroom staff had greater visibility into not only what activities are upcoming but also how the current activities are progressing. (Cramer et al., 2011)
As said by Cramer et al, There are many uses of vSked that benefit teacher and student alike, by being able to broadcast messages to all students at once and ask students their preferences and gain a whole class response at once. Within this article it explores the options available such before programmes such as vSked paper, systems of all three of these resources were used as individual paper books however there is the problematic situation of teacher not being able to monitor each students choice book constantly.
The Main points of the article are to raise the importance of how to manage a classroom with ASD without having to have one to one teacher to student throughout the school day. Vsked allows the class teacher to monitor every pupil’s choices and schedule at a realistic pace with ease for both teacher and student. These developments in PECs are a breakthrough for SEN teaching not just for the use of teacher but how crucial it is for the development of pupils with ASD and their social and interactive skills.
Technology within SEN 