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The study has
shown a positive result of an experiment based on a
technological and cognitive approach from both the point of view
of the perception of the experience and on the presumed effect of
the experience itself. In fact, both the parents and the children, at
the end of the study, considered the experience to have been very
positive. It was a period in which they could learn and experiment
on a different way of studying without being limited to the
repeated and boring reading exercises of texts (also with vocal
support) which, in their case is known to be both difficult and
irritating and gives no efficient scholastic results.
We maintain that
the most important result from the study carried out has been the
positive feedback received from the participants,
following the experience directed towards a study and learning
approach not normally used: learning based on the cognitive
stimulation of visual-spatial aptitudes on the one hand and
the categorization and synthesis of concepts on the other hand.
These activities are fundamental in both the construction of the
conceptual maps and in the efficient organization of knowledge in
memory.
These activities
are made much easier by the use of
Knowledge Master, a software specifically studied and created to aid
learning processes. It possesses particular functions to ease and
stimulate the analysis of texts and cognitive manipulation of
subjects in a visual-spatial way, thus allowing the new knowledge to
be understood and structured visually as well as verbally. Many
research and content analysis, automatic question and answer
functions, paths and graphical organization facilitate
understanding.
It is vital to
emphasize that the software is an efficient help to those with
attention and perception difficulties. It assists by means of the
multimodality of the voice support used simultaneously while
viewing the map and the text. The software in no way substitutes the
child who is learning. It interacts with the student, so it is
the child himself who creates and organizes his knowledge.
An approach to
active learning sustained by attentive and expert
personnel, who can guide towards this different study method, has
brought to fruition an efficient educational and psychopedagogical
experience in an pleasurable and stimulating way and which, at the
same time, offers excellent future prospects.
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