Archive for April, 2010

Infant Literacy Skills – Newborn To Three Years

Tuesday, April 27th, 2010

Children need to develop literacy skills before their first day of school and research consistently shows children learn literacy skills even before talking.
Emergent literacy theorists believe that children start learning about literacy (reading and writing) from birth. Infants can learn about the letters of the alphabet and concepts of print long before they are able [...]

Educational Revolution With Smartphone Devices

Monday, April 26th, 2010

Mobile phone subscribers globally, will hit the 5 billion mark during 2010. To this end, the U.S. Department of Education has earmarked $5 billion for competitive school-reform grants to scale up pilot programs of handheld devices & define best practices for learning.
An article, “How Smartphones and Handheld Devices Are Bringing On An Educational Revolution” outlines [...]

Web Systems Inspire Deaf Kids To Learn To Dance

Thursday, April 22nd, 2010

Late in 2009, South Africa’s “Got Talent” show announced its winner, a deaf hip-hop dancer named Darren Rajibal. The 19 year-old had danced for just four years when during a power cut he decided to entertain family and friends by dancing. Many of his moves were learned from internet videos.
After the show, [...]

Future Arts 2010: Interview With LifeFM in Cork

Wednesday, April 21st, 2010

On April 8, 2010, Anna Daly from Cork radio station LifeFM talked with IDK’s Miriam Walsh, an attendee at the Arts Council’s Future Arts conference in Dublin from March 27-29, 2010. A podcast of this interview will be posted here asap. IDK’s Caroline Carswell also wrote an arts inclusion advisory for administrators after the [...]

Irish Deaf Kids Wins €4,000 With 3 Business

Sunday, April 18th, 2010

For a €4k cash prize, small firms in Ireland were recently invited by 3 Mobile and the Sunday Business Post’s “Computers in Business” magazine, to describe how €4,000 would boost their business in 2010.
Irish Deaf Kids is delighted to advise that its pitch won the competition.
This funding will be invested in a project for which [...]

How Educational Software Benefits Deaf Students

Thursday, April 15th, 2010

Young deaf students attending Lawrence Elementary School in the US have seen the literacy and numeracy benefits of a new software programme.
In the classroom, audio output from the computer is sent via radio waves, directly to receivers the students wear on their hearing aids and/or cochlear implants. Ambient noise is limited for the children [...]

Deafness Led To The Phone, Internet & SMS Texts

Tuesday, April 13th, 2010

Deafness had a key role in the invention of the phone, the internet and SMS texting. As voting for Ireland’s Net Visionary Awards gets under way, Miriam Walsh explains the link to each technology.

Would you consider deafness in any way to have influenced the telephone, Internet and SMS texting as everyday tools for communication? Most [...]

National Audiology Review: Another Mum’s Story

Friday, April 9th, 2010

Here’s another mum’s story about being let down by audiology services in Ireland, after her son failed a hearing test at 9 months. Other parents also shared their stories on the irishdeafkids.ie site.

Charlie was 10 months old when the audiologist suggested glue ear was the underlying issue.  I was told to return to the audiologist [...]

Future Arts: FYI 2010 – Accessibility And Advocacy

Wednesday, April 7th, 2010

IDK was recently invited by the Arts Council to attend its Future Arts: FYI 2010 event for youngsters aged 15 to 23, in Dublin (March 27 – 29, 2010).
Our role was to give a ‘deaf’ angle to the young delegates at the weekend’s discussions and workshops. This included basic deaf-awareness, explaining how Speedtext [...]

IDK & Special Stories in The Sunday Business Post

Tuesday, April 6th, 2010

The Sunday Business Post recently interviewed Kate Gaynor from Special Stories and IDK’s Caroline Carswell about their book, “A Birthday For Ben”.
The two-page feature in the SBP’s Agenda Magazine can be read as two colour pages (PDF files): (1) Page 24 (2) Page 25 or as a simple webpage.