BLENDED LEARNING USING MULTITOUCH AND SENSORY RESPONSIVE TECHNOLOGIES IN KINDERGARTEN: THE FUNLAB PROJECT, BUCHAREST, 2014
Authors: Buicabelciu Oana 
Published: February 2023

E-learning has been spreading more and more in the Romanian schools in order to support the traditional teaching process. Computer-assisted instruction has many advantages, such as active learning strategies, students' involvement in learning, and development of more complex technical skills in tune with greater demands for social and societal insertion. However, there are still many controversies related to the phenomenon of human alienation, reduction of basic interpersonal relations, therefore having negative effects upon the emotional-affective dimension of personal and interpersonal relationships.

Referring to persons with disabilities, it is commonly agreed that technology is not just their ally, but often the only chance to compensate their natural induced impairments. People with disabilities use technology to communicate, move, fulfill their basic needs, and self-care, overcoming the 'assisted-person' status and gaining more independence and greater control upon the quality of their lives. Still, questions remain: can or will technology ever help them decisively to overcome social barriers, those last challenges to social progress and the emergence of societies showing an inclusive frame of mind? Those 'walls of discrimination' created between ignorance and tolerance can actually be torn down, at some point, so that disability may be addressed as a sample of human diversity and not as a disadvantage? How can we use technology to get a positive answer to this issue sooner?

Using these questions for starters, a project dedicated to the training of inclusive mindsets through play and teamwork from the early age has begun in Bucharest at the Special Kindergarten for the Hard of Hearing no. 65 in March 2014. Fun Lab is a project that combines latest learning technologies through sensory stimulation using cutting-edge equipment with problem-solving strategy based on mutual interaction and support in order to solve amusing tasks, which brings persons with sensory disabilities and regular people of all ages together.
We wish to reform the way of looking at disability within the community, to prevent indifference or intolerance, discrimination (even the positive one). We wish to reform the way of thinking of persons with disabilities, both with or without sensory impairments, but having "ignoring or indifference disabilities", in the way of a common effort to real equal opportunities and rights to life and education of all those involved.
And because communication between these dramatically different communities is often difficult or impossible, we chose a universal way, so to speak, to communicate, at local, international or even intergalactic level... what else could unite us more tightly and make us interact to each other than technology? We bet on technology, this gigantic destroyer of humanity, as it was often described, to reverse it against its long standing meaning, that is to maim and extinct human relationships and human in generally in the favor of the machine. We plan to reverse the poles and use technological systems to close different communities, to make them interact and know each other, to accept each other and to support each other, completing to one each other in order to achieve a common goal - progress.

Project Goal

Our goal is a kind of "domino" relationship between the progress of approach and education strategies for rehabilitation of preschoolers with sensory and associated multi-sensory disabilities and the social progress of the community within they will find their place. Non-acceptance and indifference come from ignorance and lack of relationship; by offering a common "toy", we hope to improve not only the life of persons with deficiencies, but the personal progress desire of those from the greater community, referring to attitude toward deficiency in general, toward impairment and limits, even physical ones, toward knowledge or relationship.

Activities and results

What we plan for ourselves through this project is offering work techniques and abilities for teachers, students and parents, as education partners, by organizing of interactive workshops "Sensory-lab"-like, in which we blend fun, relaxation and out of daily routines with a subtle and positive learning process through play and fun.
We use multi-touch technologies and sensory responsive equipments, such as: multi-touch 27" monitor computer charged with hundreds of apps and games from the mains AppStores (sensory training, speech therapy apps, deaf signs apps, sport and motric coordination games, music, team play games, memory and attention games, cognitive and communication development games using virtual realities), 3D archive library and also sound, light and movement responsive equipments.

Through participation at "sensory-lab" workshops, the life of the school community will improve and the mutual interactions between the two categories of persons: those who can hear and those who cannot, even if we talk about preschoolers or their parents. As a result of "sensory-lab" activities we expect an increase of the interest in common events and an increased involvement in education and extra-curricular activities of parents and local community.