Browsing by Subject "learning materials"

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    South Africa
    (Juta, 2010) Schonwetter, Tobias; Ncube, Caroline; Chetty, Pria; De Beer, J; Armstrong, C; Oguamanam, C; Schonwetter, T
    South Africa is the world’s 25th-largest country by surface area, and 24th-largest by population. It is located at the southernmost region of Africa and divided into nine provinces: Limpopo, North West, Gauteng, Mpumalanga, KwaZulu-Natal, Free State, Northern Cape, Western Cape and Eastern Cape. South Africa’s colonial past dates to the 16th century. Slavery was widespread by the 17th century and was not abolished until the mid-19th century. Racial discrimination was rampant during the apartheid era between 1948-94, when South Africa was governed by the National Party. After protracted negotiations, the first democratic elections were held under an Interim Constitution in 1994. This negotiated transition from apartheid to democracy has been hailed as both ‘one of the most astonishing political achievements of our time’ and ‘a miracle’. Since 1994 the government has been led by the African National Congress (ANC), which won democratic elections in 1999, 2004 and 2009. Since 1994 the government has pursued democratisation, socioeconomic change and reconciliation.
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    TEDI 3 Week 3 - Approaches to Making Learning and Teaching Material Accessible: Part 1
    (2019-06-01) Viljoen, Hestelle
    In this video, Hestelle Viljoen discusses different approaches to make both learning material and assessment tasks more accessible to learners with visual impairments. She discusses practical ways to adapt learning materials, particularly visual materials (such as images and graphs) to be usable by visually-impaired learners, and discusses how to use braille and tactical elements to modify assessments and practical learning activities to make them more accessible. She discusses the use of supplementary text and physical props to accompany images and diagrams to provide alternative ways to access the desired learning activity.
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    TEDI 3 Week 3 - Approaches to Making Learning and Teaching Material Accessible: Part 2
    (2019-06-01) Viljoen, Hestelle
    In this video, Hestelle Viljoen discusses approaches to making visual teaching and learning materials more accessible for learners with visual impairments. She discusses how to remove unnecessary images and replacing them with equivalent text resources; how to reduce visual information for adaptation for conversion into braille equivalents (such as removing colours, removing unnecessary boundary lines; and replacing inherently visual materials with alternatives that cater to users with low- or no-vision. She closes with discussing how to make alternative kinds of assessments that can be completed effectively for learners with visual impairments.
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    TEDI 3 Week 3 - Conversations on the Experience of Accessible and Inaccessible Learning Material
    (2019-06-01) Watermeyer, Brian; Leteane, Benedict; Lourens, Heidi; Botha, Michelle
    In this video, members of the TEDI-VI MOOC panel discuss their experience of accessible and inaccessible learning materials. Benedict reflects on his experiences as a learner in the special school system, in which there were not sufficient braille books for the number of visually-impaired learners in the classroom, and insufficient tools (such as Perkins braillers). He explained the difficulties of having to rely on partially-sighted learners in the classroom, who had to take on additional responsibilities in the classroom, and the anxieties this could induce in the classroom. Heidi, who had full access to accessible learning materials, discusses the difficulty of submitting assignments which were scoped in inaccessible ways (such as requiring images and photographs) for visually-impaired learners. Michelle discusses the difficulty of advocating for her needs and negotiating for assistance with different teachers, which she had to do herself, and the experience of feeling singled-out as the only child with visual impairments in the classroom. She discusses the experiences of shame of asking for consideration from her teachers and the sense of imposing on their teaching techniques, and how her school experience and grades were very dependent on the willingness of her teachers to accommodate her learning needs. Heidi discusses the lack of accessible leisure reading material in the school library and the lack in general of recreational activities for learners with visual disabilities. The panel closes by discussing the transformative potential of assistive digital technology while being aware of the pitfalls, particularly with the focus on audio at the exclusion of braille.
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    TEDI 3 Week 3 - Conversations with Teachers about Accessible Teaching and Learning
    (2019-06-01) Watermeyer, Brian; Daniels, Samantha; Bongiwe, Daniels
    In this video, Brian Watermeyer interviews Samantha Daniels and about their experiences in dealing with accessible and inaccessible learning materials in the classroom. Samantha, a teacher in a special school, discusses the frustration of working with inadequate materials and the need to work around insufficient resources with very young visually impaired learners, and discusses some of the strategies and workarounds she has developed in her class which includes partially-sighted and totally blind learners. She also discusses the difficulties of working with timeframes that may not take into the account the needs of students with visual impairment and colleagues who may not be fully supportive of the needs of special-needs teachers. Bongiwe Daniels, the principal of a special-needs school in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa, reflects on her experience of dealing with the infrastructural deficits that had affected the school when she became principal, and how they negatively affected the ability for learners to participate in classroom activities. She discusses how she reached out to civil society and aid organisations in order to raise funds and supplies to provide the resources necessarily to provide quality education. The panel then discusses how to appropriately use (and the skills required to use) assistive technology, such as smartphone and software.