In order to realize the dream of the ‘Digital Inclusion’ programme in the State by empowering all students in the State in ICT, KITE introduced specific ICT training programme for students who require special attention. KITE successfully imparted ICT training to all visually challenged teachers in the State using the free software- ORCA. As the first step, the training module for teachers has been developed and entirely using the free software application GCompris.
KITE customized the free software based application GCompris exclusively for this programme for differentially abled students, by which a total of 119 activities are incorporated under 8 sections. Using this software, it is possible to provide specific topics relating to physical and psychological conditions of individual students. The module comprises of various educational activities enabling the student to learn by seeing, hearing, touching and reading. Students with differential capabilities were able to learn ICT through this software irrespective of their physical limitations. By using the customized software, differential capabilities found in students such as lack of memory, attention loss, lack of hand-eye co-ordination etc could be overcome significantly, enabling those students to learn and develop much better. The software GCompris has been packed with activities infusing reading, numericals, coloursetc along with different games to help students with hearing impaired, visually challenged, orthopedically handicapped etc. The learning process has been designed to facilitate psychological growth for students playing different games. The narrations and letters have been made available in Malayalam. The module which encourages reading, calculations, puzzles, creation of maps etc was also made use of in training the teachers from schools with the differentially abled students.
KITE customized the model of ‘Insight’ training programme which was developed for visually challenged teachers by Kerala State IT Mission for training for visually challenged students and this was a major step in Digital Inclusion front. KITE received special appreciation from Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) for this initiative.