Inclusive Education Is ‘All-Encompassing’ Learning
Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010Inclusive education gives all children mutual learning experiences - while also benefiting teachers’ preparation skills and professional development.
Fundamentally, inclusive education teaches children about diversity, and leads teachers to diversify within their own professions, for social benefit.
This academic blog post, “Inclusion Is Needed In Classrooms“, makes a solid case for inclusive education, with an itemised reading [...]
IBM’s KidSmart PC Supports Language Teaching
Friday, January 29th, 2010IBM’s KidSmart program was recently displayed at the Young Scientists’ Exhibition in the RDS. This program aims to integrate interactive teaching and learning activities into pre-schools and is aimed at 3-7 year olds.
The program is currently used with over 2 million children in 60 countries. The focus is on underprivileged areas as well as educating [...]
Deaf Education Conference - March 4, 2010
Tuesday, January 26th, 2010A conference on The Future of Deaf Education in Ireland will take place at The Croke Park Conference Centre in Dublin, on March 4th.
The conference will see the launch of a new policy document compiled by DeafHear.ie, The Catholic Institute of Deaf People and The Irish Deaf Society. This policy sets out a new future [...]
Interview With DS3 Project Officer, Emma Clarke
Monday, November 16th, 2009Miriam Walsh, IDK´s journalist intern, recently met Emma Clarke, project officer of Trinity College Dublin´s Deaf Support at Third-Level (DS3) project to find out what supports students can use.
Starting college is never easy. Sometimes none of your friends are at the same college and you may be far away from home. Being deaf or hard of hearing [...]
Sign Language In Schools Benefits All Students
Tuesday, November 10th, 2009Ballymahon Convent of Mercy Secondary School is breaking ground in deaf education in the midlands with a new deaf unit, which is currently educating two young girls in the mainstream system.
An initiative of Eileen O’Donovan (graduate in Deaf Studies at Trinity College Dublin), the unit was set up in September 2008 and supports several deaf [...]
Computers Learn To Identify Signs In TV Footage
Monday, October 26th, 2009Three PhD candidates in the Netherlands have spent the last few years developing technology to recognise sign language in real-time.
One researcher, Jeroen Arendsen, said, “Very little is known about the perception of sign language. The aim of this research was to expand our knowledge of human observation of signing. For instance, it turns out that [...]
Teacher’s Story: Deaf Students In Adult Education
Wednesday, October 14th, 2009More and more deaf students are being taught in third-level classes, some mainstream and others not. Here, Sinead Quealy, from Waterford Institute of Technology (WIT), recounts her experience of teaching a group of adult deaf students. Her experience may help lecturers who teach deaf students.
I taught adults for three years in Waterford City VEC. [...]
TranscribePod Make Podcasts Fully Accessible
Wednesday, September 23rd, 2009Accessibility is a primary focus in modern education. Recent years have brought the introduction of new tools like CaptionTube (a captioning tool for YouTube videos), interactive whiteboards and now podcast transcripts.
Teachers and lecturers can face challenges in preparing for a class where a student has hearing issues. If a teacher is showing a video in [...]
An Aspiring Deaf Dentist Identifies The Challenges
Thursday, September 17th, 2009How to lip-read through a surgical mask? This was one of the challenges an aspiring deaf dental student at Trinity College, Dublin, had to consider during their shadow week to identify the hurdles the course will raise.
Read their follow-up interview on TCD’s Deaf Support in Third-Level site … (in word document format)
Interactive Whiteboards Promote Pupils’ IT Literacy
Monday, July 20th, 2009Using interactive whiteboards in mainstream primary school classrooms motivates pupils by offering educational tools with a strong visual learning element. For deaf children who learn visually, whiteboards can contribute to inclusive teaching in many ways.
Interactive teaching directly at the whiteboard is possible, instead of the child missing instructions while at a classroom workstation
The child easily [...]