Videoconferencing and Linguistic Rehabilitation

Videoconferencing and Rehabilitation

Equipment

• Internet connection: 1 x ISDN• standard computers (122 Pentium)• a camcorder• a PictureTel 50 videocodexvideocodex

Videoconferencing and Rehabilitation Participants

• Pupil Team 2:

Otto (aged 10-11) and Timo (aged 10-11)

• Special Needs Assistant: Riija

• Teacher: Johanna

• Pupil Team 1: Henna (aged 9-10) and Kalle (aged 8-9)

Videoconferencing and Rehabilitation Aims

• experimenting with and developing linguistic rehabilitation based on videoconferencing;

• contributing to the adaptation of classroom working methods into digital form;

• making expert services easily accessible;

• creating ways of ensuring universal access to linguistic rehabilitiation irrespective of where one lives; The pupils’ village school

Videoconferencing and Rehabilitation Aims

• using videoconferencing to implement rehabilitative pedagogical interventions:

• immediate interaction, with the pupil playing a central role;

• pictorial communication: words having been lost, they are looked for and supported through pictures;

• an action orientation: the pupil is all the time engaged tasks assigned by the teacher;

• taking the pupil’s own thinking into account as the starting point of their rehabilitation.

Videoconferencing and Rehabilitation

Implementation

• The pupils worked in two two-pupil teams.

• The assistant helped with IT-related problems and, later, completed any unfinished tasks together with the pupils.

• The teacher supervised the pupils mostly alone, sometimes with the teacher’s own pupils present.

• The project lasted two years, with both teams provided with an hour’s rehabilitative activities once a week.

Videoconferencing and Rehabilitation

Whiteboard

• In videoconferencing, the whiteboard is a shared working platform. It is available to all participants during the video-link session.

• The whiteboard was the most important tool used to implement the exercises in a digital mode.

• During exercises the pupils moved pictures or text, wrote, crossed out words and passages, deleted superfluous elements, opened ”hatches” and copied and repasted materials.

• Between 4 and10 pages of ready-to-use exercise templates were prepared on the whiteboard for each exercise session.

• The contents of the pages were discussed, the pupils did exercises following the instructions, the teacher guided the activities by asking additional questions.

• Any sense of distance vanished during the sessions, replaced by an atmosphere and a setting akin to those found in face-to-face exercises.

Videoconferencing and Rehabilitation

Whiteboard

Riimittele. Mikä tämä on?

Se on valkea kuin hammas

se on villainen __________

Jos lautasella tuoksuu viili,paikalle voi hiipiä _______

Sitä ei haittaa pahakaan likasen eläimen nimi on ______

Ratsastukseen sopii koni,parempi on kuitenkin _____

Videoconferencing and Rehabilitation

Whiteboard

• The pupils have already had rhyming exercises (exercise page 6).

• The smaller children (who cannot read) listen as the teacher reads out the text, after which they must find the appropriate rhyming word, which the teacher then types in. The bigger children complete the text on their own.

Look at page three and pick a suitable caption for pages 4-8 (Edit Copy – Edit Paste)

Paul the Bunny bounded happily home to tell Father and Mother Bunny what a good time he had had.

Paul was out in the yard packing his picnic hamper. He filled it with cabbage, salad, carrots and parsley.

By the time Paul the Bunny had his fishing line in water it was already midday. Paul heard his stomach rumbling and realised that it felt strangely empty. He was hungry.

It was a radiantly sunny morning. Paul the Bunny opened his eyes and was out of his bed with a single bounce, shouting for joy: “Today I’m going on a picnic, whoopee!”

His full stomach played a trick on Paul. He fell asleep in broad daylight.

Videoconferencing and Rehabilitation

Whiteboard

• The story has already been discussed and the pupils are familiar with it.

• The pupil must find an appropriate text and move it under the illustration.

Videoconferencing and Rehabilitation

Experiences: Equipment

• The equipment worked well, providing adequate support to make implementing the rehabilitation possible.

• The video image used with the whiteboard is quite small, causing no delays during picture transmission.

• In terms of rehabilitation, sound is probably the most important element. A creditable standard was achieved after a series of tests.

• The pupils picked up the required skills quickly. There was no stage when carrying out the exercises would have been hampered by lack of adequate technical skills among them.

Videoconferencing and Rehabilitation

Experiences: Pedagogy

• There was a level of interaction nearly equivalent to that in the classroom.

• In some ways, pictorial communication worked better than in contact sessions. A digital image was easier to use.

• During supervisory sessions, the pupils did their exercises as keenly as during contact sessions. All activity was accompanied by immediate feedback and teacher supervision.

• The pupils discussed their tasks among themselves and asked the teacher for advice. No differences as compared with contact activities.

Videoconferencing and Rehabilitation

Experiences: The Whiteboard

• It proved a good and versatile shared working platform.

• Its functions were somewhat clumsy and rudimentary.

• Preparing activity templates is a laborious and slow process, there being no way to enlarge and reduce the images, for example.

• Flexible use presupposes ”similar” equipment during the videoconferencing session, for example as regards screen resolution, number of colours, and fonts.

Videoconferencing and Rehabilitation

Experiences: General Points

• The smaller pupils in particular need contact sessions to complement videoconferencing. Depending on age, it is good to hold at least 4-2 contact sessions every school year.

• Successful rehabilitation presupposes working collaboration with the target school. For example, the subjects discussed during linguistic rehabilitation can be chosen among the current objectives of the class.

• Pupil concentration was better during videoconferencing sessions than when they were taught face to face.

Videoconferencing and Rehabilitation

Experiences: General Points• The materials and activities were familiar from

contact teaching and learning. However, thinking up the exercises and designing materials for a digital platform and so on caused a great deal of work. Preparing a single exercise session took some 3-5 hours.

• Designing a good exercise package would require a special project or other sponsored work.

• Naturally, videoconferencing cannot deliver all types of rehabilitation function.

Videoconferencing and Rehabilitation

For further particulars apply to

Johanna Kiiski johanna.kiiski@kolumbus.fi

Erkki Mustajoki erkki.mustajoki@oppi-a.fi