Haiti - Education : The digital technologies to serve students with special needs
As part of the school policy of inclusion of the Ministry of Education (MENFP) aiming the effective support of children with special educational needs, the School Adaptation Committee and of Social Support (CASAS), in partnership with the Haitian Society for Aid to the Blind (SHAA) organized a three days seminar on the theme "The digital and pedagogical accessibility", aimed at supporting new initiatives, relying on the use of Information and Communication Technologies for Education (ICTE) and prepare trainers of trainers.
Hosted by Jean Philippe Etienne, physicist by profession, graduating student for obtaining a Master disabled technology at the University Paris 8 in France, twenty executives from technical departments of the Ministry of Education were trained in the use of special software to facilitate learning for people with special needs such among other "Dragon Naturelly Speak" (dictation), "PICTOP" (letters label selections, syllables, words or phrases) and "GENEX" an IT development environment of educational multimedia activities, a tool to help in schooling for physically handicapped children, iwhose the zooming of all the objects displayed on the screen also makes it usable for the visually impaired students.
This core group of trainers must in turn ensure the transmission of learned concepts to teachers so that they are better equipped to mentor children with physical and mental disabilities in the classroom. This is ultimately to empower them, while facilitating a successful school learning.
The CASAS, who believes that special education is a very important link in the chain of the regular education system, plans to organize in the coming days a series of training courses for teachers to help them to properly handle these software serving to improving the learning of children with special needs.
