Special Educational Needs and Disabilities

Self study resources

• • Dyslexia and learning computer programming Powell et al. 2004: Explores some issues of teaching computer science to students with dyslexia. Evidence suggests that dyslexic students bring positive benefits to programming such as visualisation and creative problem solving skills. Suggests a set of  accessibility guidelines. 

  • Programming without a computer: a new interface for children under eight. Wyeth & Purchase, 2000.

  • ARISE: Applied Robotics Instruction for Special Education. Focuses on hands-on learning and building working robots with students interacting with each other in a cooperative or competitive game.

• ICT versus Computer Programming: a false dichotomy in the computing in schools debate? Blogpost from an SEN teacher. 

• Tech Star Kids Teaches Computer Science to Children with Autism: case study from 2011. 

• Evaluation of Introducing Programming to Younger School Children Using a Computer Game Making Tool Paper presented at the 5th European Conference of Games Based Learning (Wilson, et al., 2012). Notes that less able pupils, some with language barriers, were high achievers in Scratch. 

• Robotic Activities for Visually Impaired Secondary School Children Kabátová et al., 2012. Article describing experiences with teaching problem solving, algorithms and basic programming through robotics to visually impaired 10-14 year olds in Slovakia. Compares Beebots and Lego WeDo with Scratch and concludes that Bee-bots are suitable even for older children with disorders.

• Toward Defining Digital Literacy in Early Childhood (Kazakoff 2012): Slideset proposing a digital literacy model and looking at the development of Scratch Junior for young children. 

  • The TangibleK Robotics Program: Applied Computational Thinking for Young Children

  • Bers, Marina U.

• Early Childhood Research & Practice, 2010, Vol.12(2). 

• 1:1 Computing in a Special School, Cambridge Park Academy, Grimsby (2013). An EdFutures Case Study: lessons learnt from 1-1 computing in a special school.

• Making ideas come alive Detheridge and Caviglioli, (2006): Symbols have become a mainstay of communication in special schools and are increasingly finding a place in mainstream settings. These ‘visual tools’ might be used to structure subject content and reveal relationships. Think about how these ideas might be applied to visual programming.  

• Cognable: Simon Evans' blog explores the use of the Kinect, Makey-Makey controllers, switch and touch apps with young people with complex needs in and around multi-sensory rooms.

• Find Bee-Bot lessons and resources from Kent ICT, and blogpost ideas for encouraging independent exploration through Bee-Bot boxes and measuring with Bee-Bots. Extend ideas to other control technology such as Roamers, remote control toys, Lego, Logo and Scratch with more resources from Kent ICT and a Bee-Bot guide from the Learning Innovation Centre. Find more videos and tutorials on the Bee-Bot Learning Zone. 

• Bee-Bot to Logo - engaging the primary mathematician! Case studies and resource links for programmable robots and on-screeen robot simulations from ICT for Teaching and Learning in Falkirk Primary Schools.

• Ideas for using Processing language to design cause and effect apps such as 'drawing with sound' from the SEN Classroom. Paragraf iOS app allows students to experiment with visual effects using Processing language. You can use the live feed from the camera or a photo from your photo library. Modify it with effects such as tunnels, fractals, mandelbrot and meta balls by editing simple code. (69p)

• OpenSEN discusses his use of webcams to produce art style portraits, in an attempt to make an “Introduction to using computer code for Creative Arts”, accessible for SEN students.

• SEN students and Coding:  a project enabling P level students to experience computing by creating content through adapting Processing code to make generative art. 

Resources for lectures or group study

• • A case study on using Scratch to engage with students with disabilities. How students with physical disabilities, autism and blindness were supported to use Scratch.

  • Experiment with using a sensor board (such as a PicoBoard (£34), a PicoCricket or Lego WeDo) which respond to sound, light and movement or provide alternative inputs to make accessible Scratch projects for students with physical difficulties. You can make an audio controlled Pong game, draw with your voice, or use the board as a switch to control an activity.  

  • Use keyboard and sound options to make Scratch activities accessible to the visually impaired. Examples include a racing game simulator, a maze, a baseball simulator, geometry activities and number games. 

  • Combine audio and written instructions to make Scratch projects accessible for hearing and visually impaired students (example). 

  • Design Scratch projects to promote autism awareness and social stories or for learning about feelings. 

• Kinect SEN wiki: Using Kinect in Special Schools for Pupils with SLD. Free programs for gesture based technology. Natural User Interfaces (NUI) give  PD, ASD and VI pupils the change to effect their own environments through movement alone. They support young people with SEN/D to create using software and technology that they may have also helped design. 

• Keith Manville's Blog: exploring open-source, sensory and interactive technology in SEN for generative art and music-making, together with how to develop understanding of how these are coded. Students appreciate that code is behind a lot of the things they see on a computer and how using code this way enables us to take control and affect what we see on screen, sometimes with a simple change.

• The TangibleK Robotics Project: Applied Computational Thinking for Young Children.Uses robotics as a tool to engage children in developing computational thinking and learning about the engineering design process. These videos are a must-watch!

  • Pinterest collection of 100 Primary Computing links. 

• Computing KS1-KS4: a crowd-sourced document initiated by Sheli Blackburn to gather resources that are available for the computing curriculum. Includes many 'unplugged' ideas for exploring concepts. 

• The iPad resource wiki for the iPad PLC for SEN Schools in South Wales. A focus on severe learning difficulties (SLD), with many cause and effect, augmented reality and sound apps, and a sister wiki based on use of the Kinect.

  • 26 step by step videos on using Kodu in the classroom aimed at KS2 and KS3 students from Digital Schoolhouse.

Resources for use with pupils

• Quizzes, sound and geometry games developed in Scratch by EPIC for the visually impaired which might be used as standalone activities, templates or models. 

• Daisy the Dinosaur iOS App: A simple graphical introduction to some programming basics by creating sequences of commands. There are 5 beginner challenges and a free play mode covering basic logic, loops and events. Drag and drop commands and run to animate Daisy. 

• A.L.E.X iOS App: the simplicity of Beebots but with a look and feel which would appeal to older learners.  Program an astronaut to reach a teleporter. 25 free levels and create your own levels.

• Cato’s Hike/Cato’s Hike Lite App: an iOS quest  game to teach basic programming skills where Cato has to overcome obstacles using programming logic such as loops, branches, if/else and goto labels. Over 60 levels aimed at 5+.

• Scratch cards for beginners from ScratchEd.

• More useful introductory Scratch cards to print and laminate from Teach ICT.

• A set of simple introductory Scratch resources designed for a low ability class with SEN and EAL students. Includes playground activity with chalk Contributed to the TES website by hcumbes.

• One key logo: a simple Scratch drawing program for children to draw shapes using letters from Redware. 

• Peanut butter and jelly robot: A activity about robotics programming from Howtosmile.org. Learners discover how precise programmers have to be as they 'program' a friend to make a sandwich. 

• Rainbow Fish: Simple video instructions for making a colour-changing fish in Scratch.

• 2DIY from 2Simple: design your own games and assign actions to sprites in 2DIY software.  Explore game planning and design using Flash building blocks to create games, quizzes and puzzles. Reception to Y4 and beyond. See example sorting games from Y1 and Y2 and jigsawgames from Reception. Extend with 2DIY Coding Cards from Redbridge Games Network. 

• 2Investigate, 2count and 2Graph: data handling tools from 2Simple. Also find them on Purple Mash.

• Infant Encylopedia: a collection of websites and resources linked to over 20 curriculum topics. Each topic has about 10-20 illustrated pages with short pieces of text in a large font, with key words and facts highlighted, together with a number of related interactive activities and videos. Information can be searched by key word or topic. The option to hear the text read aloud is a fantastic addition, making it possible for children with reading difficulties to carry out their own research.

• SatPin: create a simple set of weblinks for an individual, group or class.

• Visual QR codes: Visualead.com makes QR codes appealing and meaningful to all learners by linking them to a picture they can identify with. Good for those who would benefit from listening to instructions read aloud (make a sound link via http://audioboo.fm) or from instant access to information or answers without needing to write or type anything.  A simple way to make websites, documents, homework instructions and answers accessible to all.

• Pictograph Creator: a personalisable pictograph maker that lets you make pictographs of just about anything. Looks great on a whiteboard, but would work equally well with one or two children around a computer screen. A great tool for children who respond well to visual representations that reflect their personal interests.

• BrainPop animated movies on Computers: How does a computer work? What's the difference between ROM and RAM? What's an operating system? Covers what a central processing unit (CPU) is and how a hard drive operates. Also mentions modems, circuit boards, and sound and video cards. A related resource looks at Data Storage Devices: how CDs and DVDs, USB drives and memory cards store data. Resources includes a graded quiz, vocabulary activities and related information pages (subscription needed). Information is presented as narration, animation, and text. You can control the speed of play and alter the window size. Includes related activities. (Subscription needed).

• BrainPop animated movies on Binary: A straightforward explanation of the binary system, how it differs from the base10 number system and how computers use it to store data. Also see a related movie on analogue and digital recording: how music is stored as representations of an electrical current and digital information stored as bits.(subscription needed)

• BrainPop Animated movies on Computer history: How did we get from punch cards to PDAs? See examples of early counting devices and discover what the earliest programmable machines did.  Learn about three of the very earliest computers, and watch as developing technology shrank the computer down from five tonnes to the size of your fingernail!    Also see a related resource on Ada Lovelace and Charles Babbage. Resources include quizzes and information pages. (subscription needed)

• BrainPop Animated movies on The Internet: Looks at how millions of portals on the Web link together to form the largest network on Earth. Discover the origins of the internet at DARPA plus, the difference between a client and a server. Learn the meaning of acronyms and terms such as ISP, DNS, and IP server>. Also see related movies on Online Sources, and Computer Viruses. (subscription needed)

• Gamestar Mechanic: learn to design and make games with this  free online tool. Move from quests to missions to workshop mode and earn the avatars, blocks and characters you need to make your own game. Develop critical thinking skills, systems thinking skills, and design literacies along the way.  Aimed at 8-14 year olds.

• ToonTalk: Free Windows-based animated world where you build and run programs by taking actions to complete puzzles and make games such as training robots or giving birds messages. While learning how to program you face challenging puzzles, and learn new ways to solve problems. You can download ready made pieces of code to use in your games. Comes in several languages. A simple way to introduce programming constructs and techniques in KS1 and 2.

• PlingToys Magic Cloud: place any physical objects on a 'magic cloud' to link them with a multimedia or webcam recording, for example placing a toy fish makes the computer play a counting song. Presents the concepts of linking inputs to outputs, sensors and tags, and can be used to introduce language such as 'if this, then that'. (Bett2013 finalist. £55)

• Ideas for using Touch-physics apps from DoBe ICT. PHYZIOS Studio (and related series of apps) enables you to generate a range of real world materials on the screen. Once you draw objects, according to physics laws, they move and interact with each other on the real-time basis. Other apps for iPads: Finger Physics HD Free, Saving Seeds, Physics Draw Free, Stripe Physics,  Doodle Parkour, Toy Physics HD Lite. Use to introduce the idea of modelling and simulations. Engage in similar constructionist play online with Moovl on Sodaplay.com from Futurelab to transform and animate your own drawings with bouncy physics and programmable behaviours. 

• Thinking Myself: Computational Thinking. A series of lessons and games for primary aged children defining the terms 'decompose', 'patterns', 'abstraction', 'algorithms' and 'variables' through examples and interactions.

• Tinkersmith's Travelling Circuits: introduces kids to computational concepts though 'unplugged' activities such as: 'My Robotic Friends': a physical activity instructing friends to connect symbols and actions, compose algorithms and debug with plastic cups.  'Fun with Functions': teaching functions and recursion through making knots.   'Binary Baubles': making bracelets representing numbers and letters in binary.

• How to train your robot set of games from Dr Techniko aimed at 3-7 year olds. Teaches basic principles such as programming languages for communicating and programs as recipes. Incorporates repetition, composition, abstraction, loops and conditionals and unit testing. 

• Scratch Junior: a Scratch project which shares a simplified version of Scratch with 13 sprites and 52 scripts. Gallery of projects in this version of Scratch Junior here. Read about plans to produce an official Scratch Junior from Scratch Ed .

• Programmable Bee-Bots (£49) have many accessible features such as embossed buttons coded by shape, high contrast patterns and sound feedback, and their movements can be traced by touch, making them useful for SEN across the age range. 

• CS Unplugged: computer science without a computer. A downloadable book of lesson ideas aimed at primary students exploring data, algorithms and procedures through engaging games and puzzles using cards, string, crayons and lots of running around. This is supported by online practical guidance, worksheets, photos and videos. For example, Santa’s Dirty Socks presents the idea of divide and conquer algorithms through a story, video and a downloadable picture book, with many differentiated ideas for follow up questions and activities.

• Purplemash: (part free/part online subscription). 2Go, Logo, and 2Sequence for programming concepts, 2Count, 2Graph and 2Investigate for data, and 2DIY3D game-making tool.

• Lauren Ipsum: sample chapters of an illustrated eStory for children on 'how to think like a programmer' by Facebook engineer Carolo Bueno. Laurie is lost in Userland. The only way out is through Jargon-infested swamps and gates guarded by perfect logic. With the help of a lizard who thinks he's a dinosaur, Laurie has to find her own way home. The free chapter 'A Tinker's Trade' introduces algorithms and turtle graphics.

• Scratch.IE: Ten free 45 minute lesson plans for primary level students from the Irish Computing Society.

• An Introduction to Control Technology: introductory lessons aimed at Y1 from Simon Haughton. Looks at real world applications and on-screen Bee-Bots.

• SheliBB's collection of iPad apps for control, programming and gaming including Creatorverse for making your own inventions, Move the Turtle for simple programming, Monster Physics for problem solving, and Sketch Nation for simple gamemaking.  

• PacketVille: a set of of games and activities for 8-11 year olds designed to teach how the internet works.

• TurtleArt software and cards: a free simple alternative to Scratch also based on stacking blocks. 

• LEGO WeDo and Scratch: a step-by-step introduction, starter projects and ideas for using Scratch with the LEGO Wedo robotics kit.