Graphics Programs Reference
In-Depth Information
tional arrangements. A 9-year old girl describes
how it feels to miss informal classroom contacts:
are the main gate keepers to the outside world.
For example, two participating children indicated
to not have any contact at all with their teachers.
“I would like to have mathematics in the classroom
because I would be able to work together with
my classmates. When I followed mathematics in
class before I became ill, we often made exercises
by ourselves and corrected them with the whole
group. Or we could work together on an exercise.
And here, at home, I have to do all the thinking
by myself.”
DeSIgN PHASe II:
FUNCTIONAL ANALYSIS
To pursue the design of a prototype, a functional
analysis was conducted. The aim was to translate
the needs determined in the former design phase
into technology requirements.
More detailed information on the needs analy-
sis with regard to instructional aspects can be read
in Lombaert & Valcke (2007).
With regard to socialization opportunities of
the participating children we found that they lack
'normal' social activities provided by school. We
also found that social activities such as playing
and cycling together to school and back were
the things they missed most during periods of
school absence. However, earlier alarming results
related to loss of social contacts with peers and
social isolation (D'Auria et al., 2000; Lightfoot et
al., 1999) were not completely supported by our
results as we found most children receive a lot
of cards, pictures and e-mails sent by the teacher
and classmates during the whole period of school
absence. Unfortunately, most children are hardly
visited and social contacts are often restricted
to asynchronous forms of communication, for
instance via letters. An 11-years old girl is rather
reluctant with regard to visits in the hospital for
a very specific reason:
Research Questions and methods
Seven children and nine teachers were interviewed
for that purpose. The children were asked to clarify
their preferences with regard to different possible
functionalities of an ICT-tool such as synchronous
interaction through video-conferencing, asynchro-
nous communication through a secure learning
environment, remote control opportunities, etc.
Teachers were asked to keep in mind an activity
they did in their classroom the week before the
interview and they would have wanted the sick
child to participate in, if an ICT-tool had been
available at that moment. The five components
of instruction as defined by Valcke (2005) were
explored and for each component the needed
functionalities were identified by the teachers.
These interviews were again analyzed by two
independent coders using the constant comparative
method, as no conceptual framework with regard
to technical requirements already exists (Robson,
2002; Strauss et al., 1998).
Secondly, the available literature on PEBBLES
(Pebbles) and STARBRIGHT World (Starlight)
was explored to identify weaknesses and strengths.
“I would like to be more frequently visited by
friends when I am home. I am not very fond of
visits in the hospital because I want to join them
when they go home.”
Results
Norris & Closs (1999) found that a sick child's
class teacher is the key communication link to
maintain these indirect contacts during periods of
school absence. In contrast, we found that parents
The functional analysis revealed some interesting
data related to the end-users of our tool. Teachers
were asked to identify an instructional activity
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