A LÍNGUA QUE NÃO SE VÊ: O PROCESSO DE ENSINO-APRENDIZAGEM DE ESPANHOL MEDIADO POR COMPUTADOR PARA DEFICIENTES VISUAIS

AUTOR(ES)
DATA DE PUBLICAÇÃO

2009

RESUMO

Because of the great technological advances that our society is going through, Distance Learning and computer-assisted education have progressed quickly and gained space in recent years (Leffa, 2005 and 2006; Moran, 2006; Schoenherr, 2001; Schrumm, 1999). On the other hand, little has been made to include people with visual impairment in this revolution which is affecting education today. With the purpose of contributing to change this scenario, this study reports on an investigation conducted to examine the learning process of visually-impaired students in a computer-assisted reading course in Spanish, specifically designed for this audience, the course Oye la Lengua !. As it is usually done in action research (Thiollent, 1998), all the steps in the preparation of the course are documented here, from its conception to materials production and practical teaching procedures with the students. The process of continuous analysis and reconstruction of the course structure are equally explained, which resulted from the monitoring of the needs, problems and suggestions from students, spread throughout the national territory and even Portugal. Students knowledge construction and performance evolution were analyzed through the six principles of Activity Theory (Kaptelinin, 1996), whose foundations are based on the studies of the Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky, along with the concept of cyborgization, as advanced by Haraway (1991) and Chislenko (1995). The findings of this study lead to the conclusion that a properly prepared course, within minimum accessibility standards, can be very useful for people with visual disabilities. This could be substantiated by the clear progress in learning demonstrated by visually impaired students at levels that are similar to the student who sees and took part in this investigation. The final conclusion is that Distance Learning and computer-assisted education, when carefully employed, can be useful tools to promote inclusion and reduce inequalities. More than that, with the blending of Activity Theory and cyborgization, it was possible to see that as beginning students master the technology they incorporate it in their daily lives and improve their performance in the foreign language to a level that is closer to that of more advanced students. This suggests that cyborgization reduces inequality, includes people and humanizes them

ASSUNTO(S)

call deficiência visual linguistica aplicada ciborguização teoria da atividade ead

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