Tag: Chennai

Environmental Education Program:

Karna Vidya Foundation has launched several initiatives to promote environmental education in Tamil Nadu for facilitating organization of inclusive educational activities for students with visual impairment. The Program is implemented through Rotary Club of Madras Coromandel and Rotary International.

The Environment Education Program aims to supplement the knowledge that the children and young generation gain from classrooms with experience from nature and hands-on activities to create a network of young environmentalists in schools, colleges, and communities, etc. Students with visual impairment and their sighted peers participated on 4th November 2024 at Sharada Vidyalaya, T. Nagar.

Environmental Activities for Students to Encourage Sustainability:

• Create an outdoor classroom
• Collect weather data
• Environmental storytelling
• Cleanup drive
• Nature walk
• Volunteering
• Soil test
• Survey of flora and fauna
• Native species plantation
• School gardens
• Wildlife conservation games, etc.

Protecting the environment is important for many reasons, including:

• Health and well-being Nature provides clean air, water, food, and materials, and it also helps with mental health.  
• Ecosystem services Natural areas provide many services, such as purifying water, cleaning air, and reducing noise and chemical pollution.  
• Biodiversity Protecting the environment helps protect biodiversity in ecosystems. Without biodiversity, the loss of a single species can destroy an ecosystem.  
• Natural resources Protecting the environment protects natural resources like plants, animals, and water.  
• Climate change Protecting the environment helps lessen the effects of climate change.  
• Future generations Protecting the environment helps make the planet a more livable place for future generations.  

Environmental education is a dynamic process. The priority of such education is to develop cautious mind of students about their surroundings. Its main task is to impart proper knowledge and training to solve various problems of our environment systematically.

Faculty development programme-STEM

Faculty Development programme for enhancing the STEM (Science, Technology, English and Math) methodology for teaching Children with Visual impairment

Valar Pirai 3.0 aims to empower trainers in their quest to provide effective education for students with visual impairments through holistic and inclusive practices. The event happened at KVTC Guindy and attended by 20 KVF trainers on 23rd September 2024 to 30th September 2024.

Benefits for enhancing teaching skills

• Enhancing and improving teaching skills for visually impaired students in core subjects (Tamil, English, Mathematics).
• Foster inclusive classroom practices.
• Introduce Accessible technologies for accessible education.
• Develop comprehensive curricula for visually impaired learners.
• Improve assessment techniques for student progress.
• Strengthen communication and soft skills for engagement.
• Encourage peer collaboration and sharing of best practices.

The Valarpirai 3.0 FDP successfully equipped educators with innovative teaching methodologies for STEM content and language instruction. The program emphasized hands-on approaches and interactive learning, enabling participants to effectively teach visually impaired students.

The Valarpirai 3.0 FDP successfully equipped educators with innovative teaching methodologies for STEM content and language instruction. The program emphasized hands-on approaches and interactive learning, enabling participants to effectively teach visually impaired students.

Objectives

To build the Disabled and Non-disable teaching resources to teach person with Visual Impairment on following subjects such as Science, Technology, English and Mathematics using accessible technology tools and device.

Illustrate the accessible devices and application to resolve the challenges of personal and academic related tasks.

Number of participants – 20

Source the Resource

The activity “Source the Resource” was started with the aforesaid objectives on September 9^th 2023 at 2.00 PM in Karna Vidya Foundation Head office with Chief guest Mr. Ravindranath Singh Deputy director for person with disability Government of Tamil Nadu  and special guest Ms. Divya from Teach for India, students with Special education various colleges, Parent of Visual Impairment and KVF trusties.

Mr. Raghuraman advisor of KVF and Programme head initiated the discussion with the students with special education to understand the observation about person with visual impairment skills and behaviors during their journey. Each one of them shared their experiences about the Person with Visual Impairment eagerly. Followed this, facing challenges of Person with Visual Impairment in the personal life and academic learning was discussed. Each one of them expressed their observation such as independent walking, reading academic material, writing assignment and exams etc.…

The challenges were noted down  by the KVF team   and continuation of this Advisor and programme head addressed the students to provide the solution for the list of challenges expressed.  The solution was provided with real world example and that was agreed by the students and assured the same will be taught to the school students with Visual Impairment during their work journey.

In the second part of the discussion, role model was introduced  to understand the capabilities of person with Visual Impairment. Mr. Ashwin person with Visual Impairment who pursues 10^th standard in a Private school and He learnt all the technology at Karna Vidya Foundation Since 2017 and He started to do all his personal and academic tasks on his own by using technology. He shared his learning experience and tools using for completing his regular academic routines on independent. It gave the confident among the participants.

In the third discussion, we have introduced Mrs. Kavitha’s parent of Mr. John harris who pursues 7^th standard in a private school.  It is introduced to illustrate how the parent can become a teacher to the students with Visual Impairment. Mrs. Kavitha briefed about the support it was done to her child to be an independent in regular and academic routines.  In the mean while she explained about the tactile diagrams and science models  done by her son and it was selected  as a good science model from Tamil Nadu region and He had gone to Kanpoor to participate in the science exhibition addressing students of Tamil Nadu.

In the final discussion, we requested each student to share their learning and their thoughts about to become a teacher in their own subjects using accessible technology tools and They requested to provide the training on technology to teach the subjects.  List of expressing interest was noted down by the KVF team and interested students would be asked to participate in the technology training and methods. Orientation on technology training for the students with Special education would be finalized soon and shared to the participants to become the teacher for person with Visual impairment.

In the final session, Chief guest and special guest addressed the students and appreciated the interest towards community development and career choice for person with Visual impairment community.

Meeting the parents of the children who are enrolled at Karna Vidya Foundation, to understand the learning level of the students and to understand the expectations of the parents with regard to the academic development of students. Thirty parents participated in the event conducted at KVF, Guindy centre on 2^nd April, 2023 and explained their expectation for their child's academics.