Elewa Project

The difficulties of the 466 million deaf and hearing-impaired persons in the world to adjust as per their needs have now increased due to the overwhelming COVID-19 pandemic, WHO 2020 report on deaf and hearing loss.

Deaf children in mainstream schools face challenges to their learning which their hearing peers don’t experience. Teachers with deaf students in their class need to use inclusive strategies to assist their learning. Deaf learners who are lip-reading, watching an interpreter or using a hearing aid may find it difficult to take notes from a blackboard at the same time. Visual aids and learning materials are a great way to support deaf learners which the interactive whiteboard with interactive visual content is meant to do.

Teaching is one of the most creative, innovative jobs out there. There simply isn’t a one size fits all approach to teaching. Therefore, the most dedicated teachers adapt their methods according to whatever their students need.

In the 8 deaf schools within Uganda, with over 300,000 students, not one school has assistive technologies that aid the students in learning and this makes it hard for the teachers as well.

Our solution is to use Interactive Digital Whiteboard for inclusive learning and innovative teaching methods. IDW come with a variety of different features for students to not only learn but also interact with the lesson. It can be a help tool for a teacher to get students to participate within class. The most powerful feature of the interactive whiteboard is touch access. This makes the white board a touch screen and allows many features for interactivity for special learners. 

Visual (what you see) feature students can learn all the ideas of the lesson on a visual plan.  Students who learn better with visual aids will most benefit from this feature.  With students who have poor eyesight objects and pictures can be made larger with a click of a hand.  They can also be darkened if to light and objects to high can be lowered. They combination between audio and video can keep students engaged within a lesson. 

 Tactile (what you feel) with this feature students can drag objects around the screen using their fingers. Students can also drop and pull images within the lesson. Using the pen tool students can write on a picture or object and also trace vocabulary words to help with their writing skills.

With these feature the students can benefits in two ways:-

Visual Learners: Learn through seeing ideas, concepts, and data. Using the board students can see images of concepts within the lesson being taught.  An example can be using a chart for a visual support within a lesson to describe the concepts.

Tactile Learners: Learn by touching and doing. An example can be a matching game were student’s drag and group similar concepts together. This example would be great to use for all three styles of learners in one lesson.

Using Interactive whiteboards can engage and focus learners through a variety of different features. As stated above these features can include the following,

·      Encourage participation

·      Integrate lessons within audio, video and touch ability

These features can grab the students and make the lesson adapt to their interest and abilities.

For the 300,000 students in Uganda who have hearing impairment, this is a good way to engage them in the classroom, help them retain the knowledge, collaborate with their peers and keep them engaged and motivated in class.

The educators are already having challenges engaging the learners as it is, and for the educators without sign language skill, it is in itself very challenging to talk to learners and wait patiently for the interpreter. 

The IDW will help reduce on the teaching methods, by incorporating visuals in the classroom and engage learners much faster than before.

We are a team of passionate ladies, who have experience teaching learners from different backgrounds. It is from our experience with the deaf students at school of the deaf in Kampala that we sat down and brainstormed ways through which we could make teaching easier and simpler for teachers who teach learners with hearing impairment. We have engaged the school we have been working with and apart from using an interpreter during our classes, we supplemented it with visuals that are funny and interesting and we realized that this makes the interest of the learners high and they look forward to the classes.

The teachers work with us hand in hand to ensure that we understand the needs of the learners first hand.

We are open to strategic partnerships that will help us create content for these schools, content that can go beyond learners with disabilities to all learners within Uganda and beyond. Our main group of educators and learners are the differently-abled and the children in refugee settlements.

As an organisation that empowers learners and educators with 21st century skills, we look at ensuring that no child is left behind. 

In Uganda, there is no school with this technology, we recommend it because we as a team of educators need it and being in a network of educators, with the government encouraging ICT integration in the classroom, we believe this is the prime time to bring this technology in the classroom.

Every classroom in Uganda to have an interactive digital whiteboard and I believe if we partner with the government as well as other private entities, we can make this happen.

Through looking at the educators ability to create lessons that are fun and visual and the learning outcomes of the learners. 

This si under the UN sustainable goal no.4 Quality Education

Through  pilot test, we intend to use two school terms to measure the impact of interactive whiteboards on students performance as well as the teachers' ability to create engage learning materials.

This technology has features of different machines, 

• Projector
• Inbuilt speaker
• Can connect to Ipad, Computer, TV and act as a whiteboard.

We are inclusive

Our business model is B2C and B2G because we know the government and private schools are in a position to pay for our products.

Apart from the training services offered to the educators and schools, we now have a prototype to offer to make the learning and teaching experience more digitized. 

We intend to provide these IDW to different schools within Uganda but for the Schools for the deaf, we want to get Grants to supply them with these whiteboards. 

We have schools that pay for our services, and we have received some grants as well. 

From 2018 to 2021 we have received a total of $15000 to carry out training in different regions.