Nobody ever said that the journey of a thousand miles would be without its bumps........
and we have already hit a few, ranging from internet connections crashing, email passwords being forgotten and most challengingly, the sign language translator not being able to make it to the workshop. The trainers from Social Media Exchange rallied to the challenge though, projecting a word document on to a blank screen and typing what they needed to communicate.
With an idea of the possibilities of the WWW, the SHG got together to start using Google as a search engine to research how to define disabilities, different kinds of disabilities and the ‘Right to Education’. We also sat together to nut out the aims of our blog and with this prepared, met with Social Media Exchange again, to learn how to set up our group blog and post to it.
Social Media Exchange gave some great examples in their presentation of people with disabilities who had started blogs and even some who were making money out of them. This interested the SHG a lot, as they idea of your work being a blog appealed to them.
The students were asked to come up with a name for the blog, so they each put forward an idea and voted on it. The final decision was, ‘It’s my right, don’t ignore it!’ With this name, we set up a blog and sent an invitation to each students’ gmail to allow them to post messages to the blog.
The blog was being projected on a wall, and it was great to see their faces light up when their self introduction came on line.
You can find their blog in Arabic at www.itsourright.blogspot.com
Following are the blog planning sheets we used.
Microsoft Word - 3.Blogstrategy
Microsoft Word - 4.Blogstrategy-Ar
Monday, September 29, 2008
Right to education for children with disabilities
Today the Self Help Group met to discuss the idea for new project for the first time. So just what is the idea?
A Self Help Group (SHG) of youth who have graduated from Nabil Badran Centre (NBC), a school for children with disabilities in Sur and some beneficiaries of Woman’s Humanitarian Organisation (WHO), will research just what is ‘The right to education for children with disabilities.’ They will define what a disability is considered to be, identify types of disabilities and consider how these disabilities would affect children attending school. They will assess the current situation in the Sur area and report back through the medium of a blog. These workshops will be run by Social Media Exchange: http://www.socialmediaexchange.org/
After assessing the situation, they will consider methods of raising awareness about the Right to Education and implement these ideas in schools and the community, at all times reporting back on the processes they went through to achieve this.
In this way we hope to share our ideas for you to use in your communities.
After the initial assessment stages, the SHG will look for support agencies that can offer post graduation assistance to children with disabilities.
As the blog develops in Arabic, it will be followed by an English language site which will also offer links and tips for teachers teaching children with disabilities.
This is the grand idea.
So we started with a survey to see just how internet savvy the group of 4 girls and 4 boys, each with hearing and related speech impairments were.
Following is the survey in English and Arabic
Microsoft Word - 1.How Often Do You Use the Internet
Microsoft Word - 1.ArabicHow Often Do You Use the Internet
To my surprise, the 4 boys had email accounts, but only one of the girls did, and she didn’t really know how to use it. Nobody knew anything about using search engines or chat rooms, much less about social networking or blogging. Having all done a training course on ‘Photoshop’ in the past and all having completed typing courses as a part of vocational training, none of them are strangers to computers, just the internet.
Convinced that the workshops, the research, the communication and online skills that the youth will develop along the way will be a big asset to give them a voice in a digital world, I am even more enthusiastic to get started and begin sharing with them another way to communicate with the world that they live in.
At the end of the session, we agreed to meet the following week to
1 Discuss the importance of maintaining privacy on the net and of internet security in general.
2 Open a gmail account
3 Use gmail chat
4 Use a search engine for research and methods of checking how accurate the information is.
Worksheet for Self Help Group (SHG)
Microsoft Word - 2.Worksheet for Self Supporting Committee
A journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step and we have taken it.
Please join us on the ride and feel free to offer us your comments and advice on raising awareness on ‘The Right to Education for children with disabilities.’
A Self Help Group (SHG) of youth who have graduated from Nabil Badran Centre (NBC), a school for children with disabilities in Sur and some beneficiaries of Woman’s Humanitarian Organisation (WHO), will research just what is ‘The right to education for children with disabilities.’ They will define what a disability is considered to be, identify types of disabilities and consider how these disabilities would affect children attending school. They will assess the current situation in the Sur area and report back through the medium of a blog. These workshops will be run by Social Media Exchange: http://www.socialmediaexchange.org/
After assessing the situation, they will consider methods of raising awareness about the Right to Education and implement these ideas in schools and the community, at all times reporting back on the processes they went through to achieve this.
In this way we hope to share our ideas for you to use in your communities.
After the initial assessment stages, the SHG will look for support agencies that can offer post graduation assistance to children with disabilities.
As the blog develops in Arabic, it will be followed by an English language site which will also offer links and tips for teachers teaching children with disabilities.
This is the grand idea.
So we started with a survey to see just how internet savvy the group of 4 girls and 4 boys, each with hearing and related speech impairments were.
Following is the survey in English and Arabic
Microsoft Word - 1.How Often Do You Use the Internet
Get your own at Scribd or explore others:
Microsoft Word - 1.ArabicHow Often Do You Use the Internet
Get your own at Scribd or explore others:
To my surprise, the 4 boys had email accounts, but only one of the girls did, and she didn’t really know how to use it. Nobody knew anything about using search engines or chat rooms, much less about social networking or blogging. Having all done a training course on ‘Photoshop’ in the past and all having completed typing courses as a part of vocational training, none of them are strangers to computers, just the internet.
Convinced that the workshops, the research, the communication and online skills that the youth will develop along the way will be a big asset to give them a voice in a digital world, I am even more enthusiastic to get started and begin sharing with them another way to communicate with the world that they live in.
At the end of the session, we agreed to meet the following week to
1 Discuss the importance of maintaining privacy on the net and of internet security in general.
2 Open a gmail account
3 Use gmail chat
4 Use a search engine for research and methods of checking how accurate the information is.
Worksheet for Self Help Group (SHG)
Microsoft Word - 2.Worksheet for Self Supporting Committee
A journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step and we have taken it.
Please join us on the ride and feel free to offer us your comments and advice on raising awareness on ‘The Right to Education for children with disabilities.’
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