TIC@ULA: Design of non-traditional technologies for resource classrooms in Costa Rica

TIC@ULA is a framework that uses non-traditional technologies aimed at literacy acquisition  in children with intellectual disabilities. The development involves two stages as follows: At a first stage, a mobile device prototype was designed, based on a web architecture for creating, centralizing and sharing learning objects with IEEE LOM standard. These objects are elements of the method for literacy acquisition Troncoso and Del Cero for children with Down Syndrome. This architecture pretends to enhance the adaptation of the method to the Costa Rican reality and extend its application to children with moderate intellectual disability. At a second stage, a novel prototype will be developed to expand the functionality to a smart classroom. The main feature of the user interface is that it will be easy to configure for non-technical users like teachers, therapists or parents. New concepts will be applied like Ambient intelligence (AmI), Natural User Interfaces (NUI) and tangible user interface (TUI).