A brief report on the use of educational technology with autistic pupils

摘要

The development of new technologies for autistic children is outpacing the creation of research evidence for their efficacy. As a result commercially available technologies that are used in practice often have received limited quality research evaluations. If research is to inform the real-world use of technology for user benefit, it must examine which technologies practitioners use, and how they use them. The survey reported here addresses this challenge by aiming to characterise technologies used in autism education. Tablets, computers and smart whiteboards were the most popular devices reported, but newer technological devices such as robots and tangibles were highly used when they were available. Technology was most commonly used to support learning, engagement and communication with autistic pupils. These results suggest that future research into getting the most benefit from current resources would be useful to practitioners, as well as evaluations of emerging newer technologies such as tangibles and robotics.