Microtechnology

Abstract

In the early 1980s I was working with profoundly handicapped children in a special care unit at a hospital school, where we all felt there was a real need to develop new and exciting activities. Athough we used a number of battery-operated toys that the children enjoyed watching, they could not switch them on and off themselves. To enable them to play more constructively, a number of us started to find out how to make switches which our pupils could operate on their own. Our initial prediction was that only some of the children would develop an understanding of the idea of switching, but as it turned out we were wrong. If we could find something a child really liked, and a switch they were capable of operating, then they would successfully learn the concept.