Shaping the future of technology use in the classroom

大多数自闭症儿童认为电脑和科技安全、鼓舞人心、引人入胜。技术具有以新的和创新的方式进行学习的潜力，我们特别感兴趣的是，如何利用技术来支持自闭症儿童更好地交流。这包括提高孩子们参与对话的能力，发展对话技能，在桌面设备上与他人合作，或者在他们不能说话的时候帮助他们交流。在过去的几年里，我们项目团队的成员与不同年龄的儿童合作，并与一系列学校的实践者和家长合作，为可用于课堂的技术的发展提供信息。这些技术支持自闭症儿童发展社交能力。ReacTickles帮助孩子们探索他们是如何使用自己的身体的，理解因果关系，并轮流进行。COSPATIAL帮助儿童和年轻人相互合作，提高他们的对话技能，回声帮助儿童集中注意力，形成共同注意力，并调节情绪。这些技术现在已经准备好在学校得到更广泛的应用。我们希望让孩子们控制他们的学习，并调查这些技术如何成为课堂日常练习的一部分。为此，我们将与儿童、家长和教师密切合作，探索Echels、COSPATIAL和ReacTickles如何在课堂实践中产生显著差异，以提高在这方面有困难的儿童的社交和沟通技能。我们亦会与教师和其他员工合作，提供真正的专业发展机会。研究人员和教师将在六所不同的学校合作，研究如何以新的和令人兴奋的方式使用这些技术。作为这项在特殊学校、专门学校和主流学校开展的工作的一部分，我们将制作我们共同工作的简短而有趣的电影，以便这些电影剪辑可以激励其他教师和学校探索利用技术促进学习的新方法。我们还将推出一个在线门户网站，让教师、家长和其他学校员工能够访问资源，帮助他们练习。这些资源将包括一个在线讲习班，关于如何使用这些技术的指导文件，以及如何与课程和评估挂钩的建议。在线门户网站将向所有学校开放，目的是激励、激励和吸引工作人员使用技术，不仅满足自闭症儿童的需求，而且满足所有儿童的需求。

Most children with autism find computers and technology safe, motivating and engaging. Technology has the potential to enable learning in new and innovative ways and we are particularly intrigued by how technology can be used to support children with autism to communicate better. This includes ways of improving children's ability to turn take in conversation, to develop conversation skills and to work together with someone else on a tabletop device, or to help them communicate when they cannot talk.In the last few years, members of our project team have worked with children of different ages and in partnership with practitioners and parents in a range of schools to inform the development of technologies that can be used in the classroom. These technologies support children on the autism spectrum to develop social communication. ReacTickles helps children to explore how they use their body, to understand cause and effect and to take turns. COSPATIAL helps children and young people to collaborate with one another and improve their conversation skills and ECHOES helps children to concentrate, to develop joint attention and to regulate emotions.These technologies are now ready to be used more extensively in schools. We want to put children in control of their learning and to investigate how these technologies can become part of the day-to-day practice in classrooms. To that end, we will work closely with children, parents and teachers to explore how ECHOES, COSPATIAL and ReacTickles can make a measurable difference to practice in the classroom to improve the social and communications skills in children who have difficulties in this area. We will also work with teachers and other staff to offer genuine opportunities for professional development.Researchers and teachers will work together in six different schools to identify ways of using these technologies in new and exciting ways. As part of this work in special, specialist and mainstream schools, we will create short and interesting films of the work we do together so that these film clips can inspire other teachers and schools to explore new ways of using technologies to enable learning. We will also launch an online portal where teachers, parents and other schools staff will be able to access resources to help them in their practice. These resources will include an online workshop, guidance documents on how to use the technologies, with suggestions of how to link with the curriculum and with assessment. The online portal will be open to all schools with the aim to inspire, motivate and engage staff in using technology to meet the needs of not only children on the autism spectrum, but all children.