Concepção e desenvolvimento de um software educativo para apoio no processo da alfabetização bilíngue pela criança surda

Abstract

Children's language development depends on the social relationships built with their families and in formal and non-formal school contexts. For the deaf child, whose first language is the Brazilian Sign Language (Libras), to have a full language development, he/she needs to be exposed to a visually accessible language, sign language. For the communication and learning of the deaf, it is important to make use of multiple representations in visual media, in addition to communication in Libras, such as the use of images and texts in written Portuguese. In the school environment and in this conjuncture that brings bilingualism as an important philosophical approach to the teaching and learning process of deaf subjects, technologies, in the context of Educational Informatics, reinforce the great potential of digital tools to make this possible, and can be an important ally. Due to the possibility of bringing multimedia and interactive artifacts, various forms of information representation can be made viable. However, considering educational software that meet the needs of the deaf student, regarding language acquisition, there is still a very small number of software. Given the social circumstances that do not favor the development of language by deaf children and the technological advance that we are experiencing, it was defined as a general objective, to develop an educational software that helps in the process of bilingual literacy for deaf children. To achieve this objective, the following specific objectives were outlined: i) to identify the essential characteristics to develop the basic structure of an educational software for deaf literacy; ii) to systematize the educational software Alfalibras, from the stages of conception, elaboration and finalization; iii) to evaluate the use of the educational software Alfalibras in its applicability and communicability by deaf users. Based on the ideas of Wieringa (2009), this research was conducted through the epistemological-methodological approach of Design Science Research (DSR), having the regulatory cycle as stages of the research. Thus, the five stages of the regulatory cycle were: investigation of the problem – process of language acquisition by the deaf child and how can educational technologies help in this process?; solutions project – design of an educational software (Alfalibras) to support the bilingual literacy process for deaf children based on the investigation of recommendations to develop the basic structure of an educational software for deaf literacy; project validation – analysis of the design and development stages of the software; implementation – software development; evaluation of the – use of the educational software Alfalibras by deaf users and deaf literacy teachers, and evaluation using the Communicability Assessment Method. The main results lead us to affirm that the software can help teachers to develop the language and literacy of these students, providing favorable situations in the bilingual teaching and learning process. In this way, Alfalibras comes as an enriching tool for this learning, bringing activities that bring Libras and the Portuguese language in the written modality at the same level, thus bringing several possibilities in its use and expanding the perspectives of how to work the activities.