Abstract:

The paper focus is on the design and development of educational software for children with special educational needs (SEN). It is based on the author's experience in teaching courses "Information Technologies in education of children with special educational needs" ("IT in education of children with SEN") and "Design development and evaluation of educational software" in Faculty of Mathematics and Informatics of Sofia University "St. Kliment Ohridski". The main focus in courses is design and development of educational software - in the first one particularly for children with SEN. The course "IT in education of children with SEN" is designed for students in program "Mathematics and Informatics" who are preparing to be teachers in mathematics, informatics and information technologies in secondary school. This course plays an important role in teacher's training because of process of "Inclusion" (integration of children with SEN in mainstream school) that takes place in Bulgarian schools. Тhe course is interdisciplinary and presents basic knowledge about needs and problems of children with SEN, use of computers technologies and software in their education and development of appropriate educational software and materials.

The paper presents the main steps in the process of design of educational software for children with SEN and the most important criteria which ensure software quality, complied in software design in course "IT in education of children with SEN".

The first step in educational software design is to determine the users group and to define the educational problem(s) that it will solve. But there are many specifics when it concern children with SEN. It includes to determine the group of children with SEN for which will be designed software, to know they abilities, to identify they needs, to define which of these needs are most important, how they can be met trough education, how computers can be effectively included to support or implement this education. These are difficult questions which require to know very well children and there abilities and needs, to know that there needs are strictly individual not only between children with different kinds of disabilities but between children with same type of disability. Therefore, in some cases, the user group can be very small.

Next steps includes selection of type of educational software that will be developed and definition of software structure. In the paper are described types of educational software suitable for children with SEN and advantages in use of games in its education. Possibility of using storyboarding in software structure defining is also presented.

Another important part of the paper is the description of most important criteria that must be met by the software elements. In this part are described the type, characteristics and requirements which software content, images, sounds and other multimedia elements must met. Paper presents also specific requirements for ease of use, accessibility, reliability and feedback that software must met in order to be not only quality but also suitable for children with SEN. These requirements are based on the software standards but include also the specific needs of user group.

Keywords:

Educational software design, children with special educational needs.