Heterogeneous classes including students with Special Educational Needs (SEN) are increasingly becoming fixtures of the twenty-first century school. As a result, the question of how to devise more effective, innovative and diverse tools has posed a significant challenge for educators and the research community. This collection considers how technology may provide SEN children with greater opportunities to acquire academic skills, while preparing them for a successful transition to adulthood. Computers, and other new technologies, hold great promise for facilitating the inclusion of SEN individuals into modern society. Precisely because they are characterized by multiple representations of knowledge, computerized learning environments offer effective support tools for the instruction of SEN students faced with barriers that make learning a more complex process. Yet, despite the blossoming of this field, research on how the use of technology may benefit SEN students is in its early stages. The development of the theoretical knowledge and empirical databases necessary to assess the impact of computers on learners' characteristics and educators' teaching goals lag behind the introduction of the respective technological innovations. To meet this challenge, this volume presents a review of the latest advances in how new technologies and their software may potentially enhance SEN students' performance, in school and out. This book was originally published as a special issue of the European Journal of Special Needs.

From texting and social networking sites to after-school activities, young people have many opportunities to interact with one another, and yet loneliness and isolation trouble today's youth in increasing numbers. Many children and teens report feeling lonely even in the midst of family and friends, and childhood loneliness is a prime risk factor for adult alienation. Lonely Children and Adolescents: Self-Perceptions, Social Exclusion, and Hope illuminates seldom-explored experiences of social isolation among young people as well as the frustrations of the parents and teachers who wish to help. This groundbreaking book conceptualizes loneliness not simply as the absence of social connections, but as a continuum of developmental experience, often growing out of the conflict between opposite needs: to be like one's peers yet be one's unique self. The author draws clear distinctions between loneliness and solitude and identifies genetic and environmental characteristics (i.e., social, psychological, familial, and educational) that can be reinforced to help children become more resilient and less isolated. In addition, therapeutic approaches are described that challenge loneliness by encouraging empowerment, resilience, and hope, from proven strategies to promising tech-based interventions. Highlights include: * Developmental perspectives on loneliness. * Schools and the role of teachers, from preschool to high school. * Peer relations (e.g., cliques, bullies, exclusion, and popularity). * Lonely children, lonely parents: models of coping. * Loneliness in the virtual world. * Prevention and intervention strategies at home, at school, in therapy. Asking its readers to rethink many of their assumptions about social competence and isolation, this volume is essential reading for researchers and professionals in clinical child, school, developmental, and educational psychology; allied education disciplines; social work; and social and personality psychology.

Loneliness Among Children With Special Needs is a groundbreaking volume that examines this vitally important, but heretofore neglected topic. Based on the shared view, from both clinical experience and research, that children with disabilities experience more loneliness than nondisabled children. This book integrates the existing knowledge, research, and applications in order to provide a model for the examination and understanding of the loneliness experiences of children with learning disabilities, behavior disorders, mild mental retardation, and emotional difficulties. Divided into five sections, the first attempts to clarify the characteristics of the lonely child, followed by a section with chapters devoted to environments and interpersonal relations. The third section is concerned with the subtyping of loneliness and adjustment and the fourth section discusses the outcomes comes of loneliness through coping and interventions. The final section provides a summary of the research using the proposed loneliness model for children with disabilities. This volume is essential reading for all researchers, clinicians, educators and students who work with children with special needs and who, as stated in the Preface, "see the importance of companionship for promoting growth of children with special needs and the costs of loneliness for current life and future adjustment."

Effective Technology: Integration for Disabled Children: The Family Perspective explores microcomputer-based special education intervention programs aimed at advancing mildly handicapped children and empowering their parents. The book applies the stress, resources and coping model to families with disabled children, examining specific components of the pro posed model through family surveys and studies, and presenting future directions for research and experimentation. The book also offers an overview of the research related to effective integration of computers into the special education system, with particular attention to a cognitive approach to skill development through various software programs. Effective Technol ogy: Integration For Disabled Children is intended for researchers and practitioners in a wide range of fields interested in family research and parent-empowering interventions as well as for those involved in technology integration within special education contexts."

From texting and social networking sites to after-school activities, young people have many opportunities to interact with one another, and yet loneliness and isolation trouble today's youth in increasing numbers. Many children and teens report feeling lonely even in the midst of family and friends, and childhood loneliness is a prime risk factor for adult alienation.

"Lonely Children and Adolescents: Self-Perceptions, Social Exclusion, and Hope" illuminates seldom-explored experiences of social isolation among young people as well as the frustrations of the parents and teachers who wish to help. This groundbreaking book conceptualizes loneliness not simply as the absence of social connections, but as a continuum of developmental experience, often growing out of the conflict between opposite needs: to be like one's peers yet be one's unique self. The author draws clear distinctions between loneliness and solitude and identifies genetic and environmental characteristics (i.e., social, psychological, familial, and educational) that can be reinforced to help children become more resilient and less isolated. In addition, therapeutic approaches are described that challenge loneliness by encouraging empowerment, resilience, and hope, from proven strategies to promising tech-based interventions.

Highlights include:

Developmental perspectives on loneliness.
Schools and the role of teachers, from preschool to high school.
Peer relations (e.g., cliques, bullies, exclusion, and popularity).
Lonely children, lonely parents: models of coping.
Loneliness in the virtual world.
Prevention and intervention strategies at home, at school, in therapy.
Asking its readers to rethink many of their assumptions about social competence and isolation, this volume is essential reading for researchers and professionals in clinical child, school, developmental, and educational psychology; allied education disciplines; social work; and social and personality psychology."