Using Games to Support Students With Special Needs!

Videogames can be a powerful medium to support learning in different ways. Today dozens of studies that are proving the efficacy of digital game-based learning and how it can improve learning (e.g. Does game-based learning work? Results from three recent studies, Richard Blunt) has been done. There is a big difference between traditional learning and learning with videogames. While traditional learning's objective is "what you learn", learning with videogames encloses "HOW YOU LEARN" as well! This method of learning can provide the information in an amusing, realistic and interactive way. Students who often use educational games say: "You don't even know that you are learning"! Many researches in recent years has been done on how that videogames can improve learning ("Don't Bother Me Mom -- I'm Learning!", Marc Prensky; " Serious Games: Games That Educate, Train, and Inform", Michael D. & Chen S; " What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy", James Paul Gee). The question "How can we integrate videogames in our educational system?" is the main issue today. If we want to integrate a new educational tool, we have to take in account one of the important pillars of our educational system: "Everybody has to have access to education". It will be a great challenge to foresee access to educational videogames for all kind of students. We are sure that a regular student has no problems to access and use videogames. But what if a students with a disability wants to play video games? We can divide students with disabilities into 4 groups: Learning disability, Visual disability, Auditory disability, Physical disability. For some categories, like visual or auditory disabilities, it is hard to find some solutions to have access to videogames because a videogame mainly consists of visuals and audio. In this paper we will take a closer look at some possibilities how students with disabilities also can benefit from educational games. We will discuss some concrete examples for every group of disability. Developing games for these specific students does not always mean that we have to create totally different games. Some of the special built-in features can also be useful for a regular student.