Documenti di Didattica
Documenti di Professioni
Documenti di Cultura
“RI/CSSI 2018”
1. Executive Summary
4. About NGO
5. Internship Overview
6. Weekly report
8. Technology Gap
9. Challenges
10. Recommendations
11. Testimonials
PHASE ONE:
PHASE TWO:
Week 1
The first week of my internship involved an introduction with the
whole staff of the school and then they briefed us about the
things that we were going to be doing throughout the 3 weeks
that we were going to be there. First couple of days we were
supposed to just sit back and observe the way teachers of that
school communicated with the students, it was much more
difficult than what you’d assume as some of the students were
born blind so they’d have no perspective about how some things
looked or worked. We spent the rest of the week trying to learn
some of their ways of teaching like basics of Braille (We didn’t
really learn Braille as it is very complex we just understood its
working). At the completion of the first week we realized how
difficult it is to even do most normal chores when you don’t have
one of the 6 senses.
Week 2
During the second week we were supposed to use what we learnt
during the first week and try and teach the blind students using
those techniques, we were not given complicated subjects like
math and science, we were given subjects like environmental
studies and social studies which would be relatively easy to teach
and even then it was very difficult to teach those students as they
would not be able to relate to a lot of the things written in the
book as they follow the normal NCERT books and they’re not
specifically written for blind people. This made us realize how
skilled and trained the teachers at that school were.
Week 3
In the third week we studied the teaching procedures at that
school more in detail and looked for alternatives online. The
purpose of third week and our overall internship was to find
better and more efficient alternatives to some of the teaching
methods practiced there. This involved us attending random
classes and just observing and try and find a better way to
teach the topic taught in that class. After some brainstorming
and some research, we came up with ideas like audio books,
games for blind people etc. These were fun, interactive and
faster ways of teaching blind people. We spent the last day of
the internship explaining the principal and teachers of the
school about the alternative methods that we had found and
how those could be implemented.
Learnings
Throughout all the projects carried out, the key factor was
communication skills. The gap between what we intend to
communicate and what is interpreted by the receiver needs
to reduced and the response we get from them determines
how effective the process is. This realization has come from
interacting with a broad spectrum of people-from children,
to school peon to Principals.
Some events are not financially helped and public good needs
to be done for free.
The organization did not have enough teachers and staff to
produce efficient work and the faculty was shorthanded.
The major challenge is high cost of learning materials. Their
learning materials are not like those for normal children. You
won’t get them in bookshops.
Record lessons and audio books. The easiest and cheapest way
to improve the learning environment for students who are
blind is to record all lessons. This way students can listen to the
instructions or lesson multiple times in order to make sure they
completely understand what is expected.
Comparing Lion Blind Girl’s school with an urban school, I felt the
rural technology gap was massive. The entire school just had two
computers, which were in the main office. Apart from that, there
was no other piece of technology in the entire school. Surprisingly,
the two computers they had were used for data management
purposes, they weren’t incorporated for teaching. We recommended
the use of special audio books, specifically for blind children, for
more efficient teaching. These audio books can be downloaded and
played from even the cheapest of smart phones. However most of
the teachers were not aware of any such audio books, neither did
they know how and where to download them from. Due to
budgetary constraints, we understood the use of limited computers,
but we strongly recommended the use of audio books.
Acknowledgment
The rural and civic internship has been a great learning curve
24x7 to resolve our issues. I would also like to thank Ms. Nisha
organization.
Testimonials
By the NGO: -
By me: -
I am also very grateful to Mrs. Nisha Arora for her constant support
which has helped me in experiencing the problems faced by blind
students.