Educational technology is contributing towards diversity awareness as it allows you to create more personalized and student-centered learning situations. This chapter addresses specific learning difficulties (SpLD) and, specifically, dyslexia, since it is one of the most prevalent challenges in the educational field. Information and communication technologies allow direct intervention with students who have special educational needs as an alternative to traditional resources, which is much more motivating. In this sense, as an example, various projects and applications are presented that allow working on this type of difficulties with students. This chapter highlights the virtual reality and augmented reality software carried out in the context of the European Erasmus + FORDYSVAR project, of which the authors are part.
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At present, the incorporation of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), the Instructional Design or design of Educational Technology (ET) and the development of software in the educational field contributes to educational intervention, offering playful and effective environments for the treatment of different disorders in children and adolescents, with the advantage of providing safe and controlled environments, generating motivation, providing a high level of interactivity, immediate feedback and contributing to the improvement of visual processing skills and short-term memory (Phipps, Sutherland & Seale, 2002; Kalyvioty & Mikropoulos, 2013).
The wealth of technology lies in the fact that it can present information through multimedia elements (audio, text, images or videos), having the possibility of storing and transferring it, combining the media or even carrying out transformations.
This is considerably beneficial for the attention of the individual needs of the students, contributing to the treatment of Specific Learning Difficulties such as dyslexia (Cuetos et al., 2012; Meyer, Rose & Gordon, 2014; Núñez & Santamaría, 2016).
In this line, research has been conducted using technological tools to facilitate intervention in specific disorders of learning to read and write (Cidrim, Braga & Madeiro, 2018; Cidrim & Madeiro, 2017; Kalyvioty & Mikropoulos, 2014; Saputra, Alfarozi & Nugroho, 2018; Skiada, Soroniati, Gardeli & Zissis, 2014; Suárez, Pérez, Vergara & Alférez, 2015; Williams, Jamali & Nicholas, 2006; Zikl et al. 2015).
Specifically, Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) are some of the emerging technologies, with an increasing trend in relation to their application in the educational field (Aznar Díaz, Romero-Rodríguez & Rodríguez-García, 2018).
In this sense, emerging technologies can facilitate constructivist learning, provide alternative forms of learning, enable collaboration between students beyond the physical space, increase motivation and interest, as well as the development of digital competence (Otero & Flores, 2011; Cuesta & Mañas, 2016).
The versatility it offers makes it adaptable to different contexts, one of them being learning disorders. Another of its potentials is that it is a safe and flexible tool and has high adherence rates (Mura et al., 2018).
Within the technological field, Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality can make important contributions to the treatment of Specific Learning Difficulties, since they offer more playful environments that can improve adherence to treatment as well as safe and controlled environments in which failure does not have negative consequences for the student. In addition, they provide immediate feedback and can have high levels of interactivity Kalyvioty and Mikropoulos (2013) together with the possibility of offering a multisensory approach (Broadhead et al., 2018), being considered one of the most promising treatment routes in this area since it allows more personalized and student-centered learning situations (Birsh, 2011).
This chapter addresses Specific Learning Difficulties (DEA) and, specifically, dyslexia, since it is one of the most prevalent difficulties in the educational field. In this regard, Educational Technology contributes to direct intervention with students who have special educational needs as an alternative to traditional resources, which is much more motivating.
As an example, we present various projects and applications that allow us to work on these types of difficulties with students.