RI/CSSI 2018-19 C

At LIONS’ BLIND GIRL’S SCHOOL VADODARA

Dev Shah
17BME022
 Executive Summary
My internship was at a blind school and my objective
was to learn their ways of teaching and interacting
and helping them improve and find better ways of
teaching and interacting with the students. This was
supposed to be achieved by decreasing the
technology gap that they were facing.
 About PDPU
Pandit Deendayal Petroleum University’s 100 acre campus is
located in Gandhinagar, which is the capital city of Gujarat and
located 23 Km North from a well developed city called
Ahmedabad with a population of 8 million people. The city is
famous for its remarkable cultural development and social life.
PDPU offers multiple courses ranging from engineering, arts and
management along with maximum exposure and opportunities to
its students through various national and International exchange
programs with Best Universities worldwide. For development of its
faculties and staff the University endeavours for various Joint
Exchange and Research programs
 About CSSI
The importance of civic and social responsibility is paramount to the
success of democracy and promotion of dignified living and citizens
ensure and uphold certain democratic values written in the Constitution
by engaging in it. Associating oneself in understanding issues of civic
amenities, societal grievances and models of providing succour to
needy and unprivileged, one comprehends meaning of life and living
and experience the value and impact of giving to people and learn to
be productive members of society. In this context, School of Technology
has introduced Civic and Social Service Internship as a training
requirement integral to B.Tech. Program for first year students. It is
conceptualized as a platform for pre-planned, organized, structured,
supervised off-campus experiences with an academic context.
 About NGO
LIONS BLIND GIRLS SCHOOL is a non-profit NGO located in
Vadodara. Its main aim is to provide basic education to blind girls
at minimal costs. it helps those who do not have the financial
means to pay for a private blind tutor. All subjects that any normal
Gujarat Board school would have are taught here and they are
taught using the same books and have the same syllabus as any
normal school would have. Their examination pattern and
question paper difficulty is also similar to rest of the schools in the
region. This has also created employment opportunities for a lot of
blind people as most of the teachers at the school are blind.
 Internship Overview
PHASE ONE:
Before starting the teaching process, we interacted with most of the
students. We learned about the difficulties they faced due to their
disability, and how they overcome them. It was a good experience of
both of us. It was a great learning experience for us and they too
seemed glad to open up about their difficulties to someone closer to
their age group.
PHASE TWO:
The second phase of our project included taking up a subject and
teaching the students. We were told to teach literature and
environmental studies since that was not as complicated as Math. We
narrated stories and even taught them about the environment and
pollution.
 Weekly Report
• 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.
 Weekly Report
• 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.
 Weekly Report
• 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

• By performing the tasks/assignments related to the projects, an

attitude of sensitized social responsibility was established.

• While interacting with all the students we realized how different

lifestyles they have from us, how all their day to day activities
are same but the approach to them is completely different by
the students.
 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.
 Challenges faced by the NGO
• 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.
 Challenges faced by me

• We being new to the field weren’t able to do things till we can

learn and consumed time.

• Never done this type of teaching work, were getting tired after
work.
 Recommendations
• 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.
• Many classrooms rely on visual cues in order to ask questions or get the
teacher’s attention. It is very traditional for students to raise their hand if
they want to speak during a lesson. Blind students may not notice when
their peers raise their hands. Instead, you should replace visual cues
with audio cues.
• For example, you could have students clap twice if they want to ask a
question.
 Recommendations
• Provide tactile learning experiences. When you are teaching a
class with blind students, you should try and incorporate tactile
learning experiences whenever possible. For example, instead of
talking about different types of rocks, you should actually have
physical rocks available in the classroom for the students to touch
and handle.
• This can also be done with different foods, shells, properties of
matter, etc.
 Technology Gap
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
and a wonderful experience for me. I would like to thank PDPU
and CSSI for presenting me with the opportunity to work with an
NGO. I would also like to thank Prof. Neeta Khurana for
supporting me over the course of the internship and being there
24x7 to resolve our issues. I would also like to thank Ms. Nisha
Arora, Principal, Lion Blind Girls' school, for entrusting me with
responsibilities and making me feel like a part of the
organization.
 Testimonial by the NGO
We were very happy to observe the participation of Mr. Dev
Shah and his peers during his period of internship at Lions’ Blind
Girl’s school.
He was actively involved with us during the internship. He had
put his heart and soul in the tasks given to him throughout his
internship and tried his level best to help the NGO in its work as
well as the blind students.
 Testimonial by me
I would like to thank Lions’ Blind Girl’s School for accepting my
proposal of internship at their NGO. I have learnt a great deal of
things whilst doing my internship there and extended my limits up
to which I did not deem possible.
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.
I had a great time doing my internship with them.