Assessing the ability of differently endowed children

IN RECENT years, there has been a marked increase in the awareness among the public, the Government and the family members of the physically challenged, that they need a better deal, better support, and better opportunity so that they would not to be considered as a burden, and they too could contribute for the development of the society.

The decision of the Union Government a decade ago, that every child born in the country has the right to education, cast on it the duty to provide education for all, and the one segment hitherto neglected and which stood to benefit most by the decision was the differently endowed children. The deaf, the blind, the mentally retarded, and the physically challenged who never came into the purview of the Government except as receivers of marginal assistance through different schemes, born out of sympathy, were told that they too had the right for education.

In other words, it cast on the Government the duty to provide opportunities and special facilities for them to get educated. In our country, hardly five per cent of the deaf, blind and mentally retarded children get any facility for education. The few specialised institutions cater mostly to upper class elite society and are concentrated in urban areas. Considering the vital need to provide educational facilities to tens of thousands of physically challenged children spread all over the country, mostly in rural areas, belonging to poorer sections of society, the concept of community based education of the handicapped has gained momentum in recent years.

Under this programme, the specially trained educators, whose number is limited, give training to the parents in their own home environment of the children. The parents are taught the basic approach to correcting the handicap, or helping the children to help themselves in a limited manner, so that they would not be a burden to their family and society.`Spot them young' is the key to the solution, and the most fundamental step is to assess the exact degree of handicap, and specify a training programme for the child in his/her own home, where the members of the family will help him/her to implement the programme. Shrimati Indira Gandhi College, Tiruchi, in collaboration with the Holy Cross Service Society of Tiruchi, has made an attempt to use computer technology as a tool to assess the magnitude of the problem of handicapped children and bring about a uniform method for assessing them, whether they be in institutions or are part of the community based rehabilitation programme. The software developed has been released in the form of a CDROM.

The number of institutions in the country to train and educate the differently endowed children is limited as also suitably trained personnel for assessing the ability, disability and attitude of the children. Hence, there is an urgent need to develop a uniform method of assessment of the abilities of children and plan a training programme for them. The tools developed can be used in special institutions for the children on a permanent basis. Children in the other institutions or in the community-based programme of rehabilitation could be taken to the nearest centre for assessment and induct them to training programme.

Assessing mental ability

`Mentally handicapped' child means a child with incomplete mental development. They are those whose normal intellectual growth is arrested either before birth or during birth process or in the early years of the development. The problem of mentally handicapped has assumed great significance in present day society with greater awareness of the society towards the handicapped. Such training builds a strong self-image and motivates them to interact freely with others.

Many pictures of objects one could see in his/her locality are displayed in the monitor and the students are asked to identify the picture. More than thirty pictures are shown and the performance is studied to evaluate and test their mental ability.

After assessing their mental ability the graph is plotted according to their level of ability. In the graph, level 0 indicates the lower level, level 5 indicates the medium level and level 10 indicates the higher level. Once the disability of the student is assessed as moderate or severe, the special educators formulate the syllabus and training according to the needs and requirements of individual child. The assessment method with the help of the computer is scientific, very quick, uniform and above all, child friendly.

Using visual media

Communication with others is not an easy task for deaf children. A special teaching method is needed to attract their attention and to make them interact with others.

The most modern way to improve their knowledge is through visual media. Deaf children can learn easily by seeing pictures. Teaching children with the help of the computer and the visual media is an interactive and interesting process. Software has been developed to help these children to understand and speak better, after assessing the hearing capacity and intelligence level of the child.

In this tool many words are introduced to make them learn and exercises to check their ability. There are two modules in this tool namely, Tutor and Exercises. Tutor is used in order to make the children learn the language efficiently, and involves one letter word, two letter words, three letter words and four letter words.

The Exercise module involves various kinds of testing procedures such as match the following, find the missing letter, find the odd man out and rearranging the given letters.

Various pictures and corresponding words in Tamil have been used to enable the students to learn that language.

Learning disabilities

Every school going student in our country comes under great academic pressure right from the tender age of three years.

The happy childhood is cut short by over anxiety of parents, rigid curriculum, mindless homework load, and frequent tests.

While a high level of performance is expected of every child, educators are finding more and more underachievers in schools.

Apart from physical disabilities like deafness and blindness, academic underachievement may be due to specific learning disabilities or Dyslexia.

Such children exhibit a disorder in one or more of the basic processes involved in the understanding and may be manifested in disorders of listening, thinking, reading, spelling, writing or arithmetic.

Lessons and tests could be made interesting to children with disability, if they are presented on a computer effectively.

At present, the assessment of such children is mostly done manually. The assessment process could be made interesting to children with the help of a computer-aided tool!

The remediation could also be done more effectively through the visual medium.

In the assessment part, tests are given for assessing the mathematical capacity of the children such as counting, sequence, number identification, arranging in ascending and descending order.

"Exercises to work" is the remedial part where effective remedial lessons are given for the children.

The task of assessing and remedying children below five years is made easy by this tool. This software could be upgraded further by adding more exercises and remedial lessons to the current topics.

The response of the children, who have been using the computer- aided lessons, is very encouraging.

The children love to click the buttons and see the pictorial representations and they welcome this kind of joyful method of learning.

K. MEERA

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