CREATING MEANINGFUL LEARNING FOR CHILDREN WITH A MEDICAL CONDITION – KEY EDUCATIONAL FACTORS AND RELATED ICT SOLUTIONS

Education represents the most important factor inpreventionand mediation of psycho-social consequences for children with medical conditions. Despite this these children are less engaged in learning, and face social difficulties resulting in lower academic achievement. Students with medical conditions who are hospitalized or must stay home (Home and Hospital Education - HHE) do not have access to mainstream education. In such a situation ICT may have a significant role. Distance learning and communication is crucial in maintaining continuity in education and in social-emotional processes for children who must stay at home or in the hospital for extended periods. However, mere use of technology in education does not ensure quality in process or outcome. Guided by educational theory, educational factors must always be taken into account and should direct technology choices. This workshop is designed to take the form of a discussion group where a list of key educational factors elaborated from previous research in educational psychology will be discussed. These factors including relationships, making and constructing knowledge, assuming public roles, metacognition and individual differences will be discussed as well as the ICT technologies that help enable these children with medical conditions learn “as if” they were in a mainstream educational system. In the process how technology can impact methodology and pedagogy in HHE, and how those technologies can be effectively applied in ‘normal’ didactical situations will be discussed. Practical use and potential problems associated with ICT for the education of children with a medical condition will be assessed. A list of recommendations for the best use of ICT for children with a medical condition will emerge. One outcome of this workshop is that Major themes will be determined during the workshop will be made readily available to all participants by the end of the workshop. Another outcome of this workshop will be: an aggregate list of the key educational factor/ICT solutions as determined by expert panel. That list can later be paired with published peer review research seeking those factor/solutions that meet both validity and reliability criteria as well as frequency of use and may be used for future works and research in the field. This workshop’s results will be later integrated with other focus groups’ results coming from all over Europe and Egypt, as part of the work of the EU funded project LeHo (Learning at Home and in the Hospital – Multilateral Lifelong Learning Programme). 1. How do higher educational institutions attract and retain quality students by offering them good quality education with high flexibility in learning? 2. How can higher education institutions promote the use of video in day-to-day activities in a cost effective way? 3. How can universities maximize video production techniques and pedagogies for next-generation learning? Examples and evaluation results are outcomes of an extend initiative at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg for increasing teaching quality and innovation. Within the initiative a special focus is given to innovative, pedagogical meaningful and effective use of video in education.