Digital technologies - support for medical education for Roma primary school students

In this paper we present the issue of selected digital technologies that teacher can use in health education of young school aged Roma pupils. Roma pupils often come from socially disadvantaged environment, their social, cultural and language disadvantage is manifested, for example in their low level of personal hygiene, insufficient housing conditions, irregular nutrition, morning alcohol drinking and smoking of cigarettes, higher morbidity. Therefore, school (in a significant matter nursery school and first grade of elementary school) plays an important role in health education of Roma children and pupils. The topic of health education is not a stand-alone subject in Slovak school system, in the first grade of elementary school is implemented into more teaching subjects, mainly Elementary science and social studies, Nature science education, Physical education and Sports education and also into cross curricular topic of Life and health protection. We perceive digital technologies as a support of education of younger school aged children, that a teacher uses in the primary grade of elementary school mainly with the aim to raise the visibility of curriculum. The most frequently used digital technologies at the primary grade of elementary school belongs computer, tablet, interactive board, in a smaller extent digital camera, voting system, visualiser, electronic building kits (e.g. LEGO), play stations, and programmed toys (e.g. robotic bee Bee-bot). In the paper we present the possibilities to use programme PowerPoint to support health education, in which a teacher can create a short presentation (or didactic game) and use it to mediate or consolidate the curriculum about health to Roma pupils. We describe in a further detail the requirements, that we recommend to apply while creating presentation for young school aged children, such as visuality, scientism, intelligibility and appropriateness. In the next part of the paper, we shortly describe the most frequently used robotic toy Bee-bot, which is used by teachers in the nursery school and in the first grade of the primary school. We present some possibilities of its usage during health education of Roma pupils.