Educase

Peep Jürmann – Project lead Mart Lankots – Production Alan Reiss – Production Anastassia Tšepaikina – Illustrator Aivo Kallas – Photographer Kaarel Vahtramäe – Designer Jaak Peep – Graphic Design Eero Ehala – Product Design Arne Ader – Nature specialist Raili Loit – Special Education Specialist Kairi Ilmets – Special Education Specialist Luisa Tõlkebüroo – Translations Keskkonnaamet – Client

An educational learning tool for children with visual and hearing disabilities. With a clear goal to teach children to truly feel what the nature surrounding us has to offer, we designed a hemispherical case that contains a set of elements found in nature. How to create empathy between a designer and children with visual and hearing impairments. What made the task more challening, is the fact that the level of intelligence of children with disabilities varies. To this end, we involved special educators in our process. Their knowledge and daily contact with children helped us understand the abilities and limits of children with disabilities. We also received a lot of advice from the Finnish Federation of the VIsually Impaired and teachers with special pedagogical training, Kairi Ilmets and Raili Loit, who advised and immediately tested the solutions with children. With a clear goal to teach children with visual and hearing impairments to truly feel what nature surrounding us has to offer, we decided to design a hemispherical case that contains a set of elements found in the nature.  These elements can be discovered and experienced by children together with the teacher. It gives students the opportunity to discover natural textures, sounds, smells and draw connections between the objects.