Thessaloniki School for the Blind: A Distance Education Program for Blind Children Based on the WEB
George Politis.
Science and Computers teacher
in the Thessaloniki School for the Blind
Education for blind students in Northern Greece is provided by the School for
the Blind in Thessaloniki, so children from other cities (sometimes from far away) have to stay in Thessaloniki in order to have adequate support for their education. Those who choose to stay in their home cities can only be sent Braille books or tapes to assist them in their needs for the public schools they attend.We are currently establishing a distance education program based on the WEB. Each student will be assigned a teacher from the School for the Blind and they will communicate via e-mail. The student will attend the local public school but will be supported by the School for the Blind with special education teacher, psychologist and social worker. The students will also be able to benefit from a European Community program, HANDYNET (in which the School for the Blind participates), which gives access to products, institutions and job opportunities for the handicapped.
Distance education, that is education provided from distance, is increasingly being used to deliver services to people who otherwise would not have the opportunity to study. It changes the traditional roles of teachers and learners. Learners work on their own, with the material supplied to them by the teachers in different forms.
In this paper we will deal with a distance education program that is being developed in the Thessaloniki School for the Blind and provided free of charge to blind students in Greece. The educational system in Greece and our methods and communication tools will be described and we will refer to future plans and problems faced.
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The educational system in Greee
is as follows:
Blind students attend regular public schools along with sighted students, a mainstreaming tactic which aims to operate, through co-existence and cooperation between blind students and their sighted classmates. This may be achieved but not always, as every blind student has his individual problems. Practice has shown that numerous psychological problems arise. Not being treated exceptionally, blind students sometimes feel inferior, as they can not respond to certain subjects as comfortably as their sighted classmates.
In Greece there are two Schools for the Blind
Our School (which covers Northern Greece) has its own Elementary School and supports High School students with tutorial lessons conducted in its premises. University students are also supported by the School.
The Elementary School accepts all blind or low vision children aged between 5 and 18, who have not completed their elementary education. The program is based on the directions of the Ministry of Education and follows the same curriculum as the regular elementary schools. The children are also taught English, music, computers and orientation and mobility. However, there are children who can not stay in Thessaloniki due to distance, family decisions or other factors. Those children attend their local public elementary schools and the School for the Blind presently only sends them braille books and tapes to subtitute the regular books for the sighted. They do not have any additional support from teachers of the School for the Blind and have to attend school on their own.
Blind students have to attend the local public high school, whereas the high school in the School for the Blind functions in a turorial mode, giving parallel and complementary education to the one offered by the public school. Again, if someone decides to stay in his home town or village instead of Thessaloniki and consequently can not attend the School for the Blind high school lessons, he is only sent braille books and tapes.
After
graduation
the blind students can either enter their desired department of the
University
(without examinations) or have vocational education. In either case they
have to
stay in Thessaloniki. Blind graduates who can not stay in Thessaloniki,
practically
are banned from continuing their education.
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Distance education is, according to Wilson (1996), "a broad category of education that strives to overcome the problem of teacher and learner being separated by some physical distance".
Dynamically expanding, its design issues, methods and strategies are under continuous research and evaluation. The Internet, appropriate software and hardware and conventional methods like mail and phone are used so that instruction is delivered.
On the contrary, in Greece distance education is in its infancy and the Thessaloniki School for the Blind is definitely one of the pioneers in this field. It is now developing its own distance learning program, one which relates primarily to blind or low vision children and students and more generally to students with other disabilities in Greece. Elsewhere distance learning had generally addressed the needs of adults, but we have decided to primarily focus on elementary school children and high school students.
This
program is provided without any charge to the learners and the
operational cost is kept low. Technology is a major factor for the
distance education, but we are planning for a successful program that
will focus on the needs of the learners, with the aid of caring teachers.
Our program is meant to function as an experimental and pilot program
for other educational agencies and services in our country.
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The tools used in the development of our distance education program are the following:
Sending braille books and tapes is the traditional method our School uses to support students in distant places. Although totally inadequate by itself, this is obviously indispensable for the blind students, as the books (or tapes) contain all the basic elements of a subject that a student needs. The drawback for the students (if nothing else is done in order to support them) is that without any form of interaction with teachers (tutors) from the School for the Blind, they cannot fully understand everything, solve problems, have questions answered etc. As the Printing House of our school is now computerized, most school books are now available in computer disks, that will be sent to the students as well.
The web pages have notes, summaries and other material that will be necessary for the student to better comprehend and consolidate the school lessons; they are not meant to substitute in any case the school books, they will be a supplementary helping tool. The context of the pages may be altered every year or several times during a year, according to the supported studentsí grades and needs. This context aims to alter the present conditions for the blind learners in several small towns and villages in Greece. We do not want them to be passive learners and observers during the school year; we intend to make them active learners by giving them material to evaluate, situations for them to resolve etc. Thus, we believe that the learning process is facilitated, in contrast to what is currently happening.
E-mail is the most effective educational tool, as its advantages are numerous:
E-mail can be used to access easily anybody with an internet connection. Teachers and learners can communicate, no matter how distant they are. A message can be sent any time, without the sender having to care whether the person he is sending the message to is present or not. The message is queued and will be noticed by the receiving end when the computer is turned on and connected to Internet.
It is very easy to use. With little practice the children learnt the basics and were eager to use it. It may be due to their need to communicate with each other, even in distance, that makes e-mail very appealing to them. The fact that they find it interesting and appealing makes it the best tool for a teacher to prompt the learners participate actively in the learning process.
Interaction can be achieved between the teacher and the learner. This way the teacher can control the learnerís progress, by posing questions and problems, asking for responses, essays, etc. Garrison said, that ìthe role of the teacher is to monitor continually the learner's cognitive processes and challenge or question inappropriate or unclear perspectives".It is also easier for the learner to better understand the lessons, as he can have his teacherís answers to the questions that arise by studying, or discuss certain subjects with him, giving his own point of view. He is able to carefully think before sending his message, which is more convenient for him compared to an answer he would have to give face to face to the teacher (or through a telephone call).
Another kind of interaction that is possible, is between learners. Our learners are not only able, but also prompted to communicate with each other. This kind of interaction makes learning much more interesting (especially for younger children, where the danger of a learner getting bored of this educational system is greater) and to some extent complements or substitutes the idea of a classroom. The teacher should be aware of such inter-student messages, in order to refocus a discussion that departs from the original targets the teacher had set. We do not presently have many distance learners, so we have been able to realize effective control over such interactions, but we intend to implement a listserver and mailing list in the future.
With FTP they will have the chance to download
programs or texts that the School for the Blind will have prepared for
them.
"Distance education for people with different needs has to
provide information access facilities that are tailored to the various
user needs" (Plagemann, Goebel, Tollefsen, 1995). We use speech
synthesizers and screen readers under DOS and Windows, but not
braille displays, as most braille displays use the 8-dot format, while
in Greece this is not used at all.
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This is the first year of the development of a distance education program and we are in an experimental stage, working with only a few children who reside in the area of Thessaloniki. Distance education is traditionally provided to adults. Unlike what seems to be the case everywhere, the School for the Blind in Thessaloniki has primarily focused on children who go to the elementary or high school.
In this first stage five children are involved. We selected talented children who are likely to meet the needs of such a program. Two of them go to the elementary school while another three go to high school. Each child is assigned a teacher, who is responsible for this childís progress.
The children were first taught in the School for the Blind how to use e-mail and a web browser , a basis which is essential for the interaction.
They have access over the web pages of the school that contain material relevant to their grade. There they find examples, summaries, questions, problems, etc. In this way they do not have only one source for studying (braille books or tapes from the School for the Blind) as was in the past. They have alternatives, more material, tests available to see for themselves how well they understand the lessons etc.
They communicate with their teacher using e-mail (although they sometimes prefer to simply use the phone, but this is only because at this stage the distance is small and the cost is low). They are prompted to send messages to each other, so that they practice e-mail and they actively learn through questions that they have and try to answer. The teacher has to get a copy of the messages in order to be able to control the learning process.
They are also able to ask for the help of a psychologist or social worker through e-mail. Something very important for them is that they can ask for information that is provided by the Handynet department of the School for the Blind (which is one of the three Handynet nodes in Thessaloniki). Handynet is a European Union, multilingual, multimedia database of technical aids and services for disabled people. Handynet module on technical aids offers:
Generally, children have up till now reacted very positively to the
program, as they find their educational tools a challenge and as a way
to communicate not only with the teacher and with each other, but with
the whole world (and this certainly must be considered an asset, as
these children have special needs for communication and information).
They understand the purpose of the program and have their own
expectations about it.
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The teachers of the School for the Blind who are involved in the distance education program are only three up till now. Yet more teachers are to be involved, who do not currently have the necessary computer experience to work as distance educators. In Greece generally, few teachers have adopted new technology in their courses (while distance education is still steps further ahead).
"Unfamiliarity with and fear of distance education technologies represents the single biggest problem in distance learning today. Teachers need to become comfortable with the hardware, to understand how the signal flows through it, to become familiar with media production, and to have guided, hands-on practice designing and delivering courseware in a non threatening environment. Then, they will be able to focus on the learners rather than on the technology itself" (Sherry and Morse, 1995).
Seminars and courses for teachers are to be organized by the Thessaloniki School for the Blind, so that they will be trained in terms of a new role and they learn:
According to a study of distance educators conducted by Thach and Murphy (1995) the ten top competencies are:
Also more children have to participate in our programs.The children who are going to be educated and live away from Thessaloniki also have to learn about distance education and its advantages, as few of them have experience of computers and even fewer know anything about computer communications. To prepare them for this program, we plan to
In the courses in the School, the children will learn the basics of using the computer and the communication tools, they will be given the concepts of the programs and they are going to learn what is expected from them.
In the outreach program, help will be given to the children in their own home.
Another step we are taking
into consideration is to expand the program to educate adults, having
different types of courses, such as vocational ones. We also look upon
possible cooperation with other special education institutions in
Thessaloniki.
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Among other problems, distance education has the obvious drawback that compared to traditional education there is a lack of dialogue.
As we have to be the pioneers in our area in Greece, we have an additional problem establishing the recognition of distance education by the ministry or the people.
Last but not least, cost is also an obvious restricting factor in some cases, as
In the first year of implementation of our distance education program in the Thessaloniki School for the Blind, we are in a phase of gaining experience, while a lot of evaluation still has to be done. Our aim is to provide free distance education to blind children in Greece, through a program based on traditional methods and on new technology and computer-based communication including WWW, e-mail and FTP .
Much effort has to be invested and we depend on the feedback from the learners in order to improve the quality of the education provided. .
We know that there
will be an increase of blind students who will be interested in
enrolling in our distance education programs, or will ask for additional
courses for adults, so we are trying to prepare the School and the
teachers to meet the needs (in teaching strategies and technology) of a
program growth and expansion.
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Garrison, D. R. (1993). A
cognitive constructivist view of distance education: An analysis of
teaching-learning assumptions. Distance Education, 14, 2, 199
211.
Plagemann T., Goebel V. and Tollefsen M. (1995). DEPEND -
Distance Education for People with Different Needs. In Second IASTED
ISMM International Conference Distributed Multimedia Systems and
Applications, Stanford, California.
Sherry, L., & Morse, R. (1995).
An assessment of training needs in the use of distance education for
instruction. International Journal of Educational Telecommunications,1(1),
5-22.
Sherry L., (1996). Issues in Distance Learning.
International Journal of Distance Education, 1, (4), 337
365
Thach E. and Murphy K. (1995). Competencies for Distance
Education Professionals. Educational Technology Research and
Development 43, (1), 57-59
Wilson A. (1996). Distance Learning.
Technologies, Curriculum Development and Teacher Education.
Proceedings of the 1996 Mid-South Instructional Technology
Conference
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