Shadaf’s inspiring journey to learn through a learning tablet is a testament to the power of determination and technology in overcoming the odds.
Rotary Special School for Hearing Impaired Children is not the usual school you would find around you. All students here have either hearing or speech impairment. However, the Principal of this school treats her school no different, and she believes that her students, if taught well, can break these barriers and do good in their lives. To provide her students with the best infrastructure, she has been associated with Cipla Foundation, the CSR arm of Cipla Limited, for several years. The foundation supports the school with monetary grants and mentorship.
Making The Switch to Digital Learning
In 2020, with the pandemic and ensuing lockdowns, while the world switched to online learning, it was much more difficult for these students to move to digital forms of learning. The school and Cipla Foundation even discussed giving students tablets, but the challenge was finding suitable content.
It was then that the school started giving iPrep Tablets to its students. iPrep Tablets were preloaded with animated video lessons with subtitles in the Marathi language. The tablets also had books to read, and questions to practice were provided, which suited the learning style requirements of these students.
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Shadaf’s Mother Speaks
“Shadaf had struggled to express himself and felt isolated from his teachers and friends. To cope with his loneliness, he spent hours watching YouTube videos on his phone.” This is a statement by Shadaf’s mother, a class 2nd student at the school. Shadaf was then a 6-year-old who had hearing difficulty since birth. When he got his hands on the iPrep Learning Tablet in his school, he immediately liked watching and learning through enjoyable video lessons.
“I saw him studying and trying to speak on his own by watching videos like ‘My Family Tree’. Not just this, I was amazed when he called me ‘Aai and his father Baba’ and wondered how he could pronounce this. Then he showed me a video of ‘My Family Tree’ lessons in Marathi language.” This is what Shadaf’s mother told his teacher, Mrs. Kunda, with tears in her eyes.
The Transformation
Since that year, Shadaf’s mother has regularly attended parent-teacher meetings with newfound excitement, eager to share updates about her son’s progress.
During these meetings, Shadaf’s mother often talked about the changes she experiences at home. For example, Shadaf’s usage of digital content offline on tablets has significantly reduced the monetary spending on internet packs for her phone. She also spoke about how Shadaf reads storybooks on his tablet. “Despite his hearing impairment, Shadaf had learned to understand and interpret the stories by using his sign language and short, easy words using visuals on the tablet.”
From Silence to Speech: How is Shadaf now?
For 1.5 years now, teachers and his mother have worked tirelessly with Shadaf, pushing him to learn from the digital learning content of his current class and of junior classes as well as to cover up his learning gap of 2 years. As the tablet had various forms of content like videos, books, and questions to solve, Shadaf never got bored and explored most of it.
Shadaf is now able to speak, perhaps not as fluently, but it is still a huge progress for him. Having this confidence, his mother is ready to enroll Shadaf in a formal school.
Real transformations can happen with the efforts of parents, the support of teachers, the will of the student, and the right support from technology. Shadaf’s story and the story of several others in Rotary Special School for Hearing Impaired Children is a testimony of the same.
Rise and Shine, Shadaf!
Wishing you the best.
iDream Education is working with a vision to facilitate universal access to Learning and Growth. Our solutions are designed to break the learning barriers and empower students to Learn Unlimited. We look forward to working together with the ecosystem partners to collectively reach and empower the students and teachers across every state in the country.
If you would like to know about our iPrep Tablet and digital learning solutions, comment below or write to us at share@idreameducation.org.
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