Board Games for People with Visual Impairment
LITE case study
Background
Learning outcomes
Implementing the technology unit
Generating ideas and strategies
Selecting and developing solutions
Constructing and refining
Evaluating and testing
Background
This case study has a focus on structures and materials technology. It illustrates the learning of four students (Annie, Mary, Hoi, and Damien) in a year 5 to 7 class of 32 students who made games for people with impaired vision.
The class had previously undertaken a health and social studies unit on people coping with disabilities, in which a person with vision difficulties had visited their classroom on a day when the students were playing board games. The visitor commented on the lack of board games for people like him and wondered if the students could help in any way. From this request, the teacher and students decided that they could make some games for people with impaired vision. The teacher also saw this task as an opportunity to undertake a purposeful unit of work in the technological areas, Structures Technology and Materials Technology.
To make the task more meaningful for the students, the teacher involved the students in setting the problem, and developing the learning outcomes and criteria for this unit. In this way the students became stakeholders in the problem. The teacher wanted to avoid tightly defined learning outcomes, as this might constrict the students' exploration and development of the technology task.
He was also aware that technology tasks have the potential for unexpected learning outcomes. So before developing the unit, he listed all the learning possibilities that might arise. Then he selected those outcomes that he considered to be important and worthwhile for his students.
By defining the key aspects of a unit of work as the overall student technological practice, the teacher maintained a focus on technological practice as a whole. This prevented the unit of work from becoming a fragmented body of isolated acts that do not add up to a coherent statement of overall learning.
The technological areas
Structures Technology and Materials Technology
The task definition
To develop a board game for people with visual impairment.
Overall student technological practice
During development of the board game, students will:
- develop understandings about people with visual impairment and their recreational needs;
- understand the structure of board games and the appropriate materials and ways to construct them;
- develop and evaluate a board game for people with visual impairment, taking into account agreed criteria relating to the rules of the game; the use of survey results; the safety, ease of use, material malleability, durability, strength, and practicality of the game; structural considerations such as portability, strength, stability, joining.
This overall technological practice incorporates all the three strands, Technological Knowledge and Understanding, Technological Capability, Technology and Society in Technology in the New Zealand Curriculum it covers achievement objectives 1, 2a, 2b, 4, 5, 6a-6d, 8 it helped students to achieve the following learning outcomes:
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