Effective use of Information and Communication technology – Bethany Society

This film features insights from Shubha Brata Dey, Senior Program Coordinator at Bethany Society, Shillong.
He shares a range of practical, accessible, and user-friendly applications that are empowering teachers to create more inclusive and responsive classrooms.
We are introduced to the world of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and its powerful role in supporting the principles of Universal Design for Learning (UDL).
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When I talk of ICT, Information Communication and Technology, especially in our line of work that’s with disability, comes to mind many a app, and amongst them, for especially children who are missing out on communication.
We have the Jellow, we have the Avaz, and in fact the Jellow is now being transferred into Khasi files, and then we are going to use that, and that will help communication for especially our Khasi-speaking students a lot.
The same way, we would like to go and do it ahead in Garo languages, especially for the languages here in Meghalaya.
So that’s in the foray, that’s in the plan, and that’s going on ahead.
If I should talk about Universal Design for Learning, the Universal Design for Learning mainly talks to us of three principles: principles of engagement – multiple means of engagement, then principle for the multiple means of representation, and then multiple means of action and expression.
Now, when I want to use ICT for especially multiple means of engagement, I can engage any crowd, whether it be disabled or non-disabled.
What they need to have with them is only a gadget, a device, and today in every day’s…everybody’s hand there is an Android mobile, that’s good enough.
For engaging also, there are so many apps, but we selectively, I selectively, I use the Mentimeter.
So as soon as I put the code and put it in the screen, and people look at the screen and go to their mobiles, what is happening is they’re engaged, they’re going to their mobiles and punching in that code, they’re going there, and they start answering whatever questions I asked to them in that Mentimeter app.
So I have attended to that first principle of UDL, which is the multiple means of engaging.
Similarly, I use Slido also.
Other than that, multiple means of representation, in today’s world, blended learning is the way.
So as much as we are doing reading, writing, whatever, ICT has come into the picture.
Today, teachers can also take their lesson plans into the, you know, platforms like Nearpod.
So I have used the Nearpod extensively, and I have given training to so many teachers on the Nearpod.
And the Nearpod is a platform that is inclusive by nature because whether I am doing pictures or any other thing, I can place their videos, and then everything in the Nearpod has got a immersible reader.
So even for a visually impaired, even if the person cannot see, that person can surely hear.
So all my instructions in the slides, they are there in place, and the student can always hear, just that somebody has to guide him if he has to do something, but that is also available if the child has got an Android mobile and there is a talkback system with that.
Now for the multiple means of action and expression, we have many other apps which we use, and I especially would love the usage of Formative or Socrative or anything.
Everybody can give a written feedback, but in today’s world, if they are given the option to use an app like the Socrative or the Formative, or even any other name that is not coming to my mind right now, but I have selected three or four apps which I use extensively.
And then they find it that instead of just writing it out in a piece of paper with a pen, if you use ICT and just the mere colours and the pictures that I place there, they get attracted in giving a better feedback all the time.
So if I should talk about blended learning and how ICT has helped even a visually impaired person, I was taking classes some months back for this blind boy in Montfort, Khanapara, Guwahati, and that was in the Nemeth Code for Mathematics in Braille.
Now ICT played a role because I had to use Zoom as a platform to reach out to him because he is sitting there in Guwahati and I am here in Shillong.
So that’s the role of ICT, and he can well hear me, and he can hear whatever dots I am telling for the Nemeth Code.
He takes that in.
His mother was seated beside him, she can see, but I can, throw out my voice and he can hear, and because of this, the classes went on fine.
That’s one thing.
The other way that ICT has really helped me is also for doing my Abacus classes online.
For that, of course, I used two cameras, and I did it online.
Zoom was the platform, but that’s how ICT has helped me.
Today, if I talk about the manuals that we have, hard copies are huge, and they take up so much space in the office also.
And I don’t have a locker.
I don’t have a wardrobe of my own to keep these books.
I have them all stacked up in Wakelet, and that gives me so much cloud space, and I have it all there.
Every time I need to refer to a work or refer to a manual, I just pull it down from Wakelet.
I go there, take it out, and it’s easy for me to share it with somebody also.
So I just share it.
So another aspect of it is that whenever we do trainings in inclusive lesson planning, uh you know, like the apps that come in handy, and we are giving that out to others, to our partners, through their teachers who come in for their trainings, and they have that training for a day or two, and they learn those apps.
Now, when they go back, they learn to use these apps in their regular classroom transactions.
So that’s one aspect, and ICT has made so…things much more easier.
So they have reportedly told me so many times that today they don’t have the problems for, you know, looking for who did something in a classwork and what was the performance of that child, because the reports are all available online.
I just have to go to that app, click on reports, and I get the result there.
The apps that I mentioned – Mentimeter, Slido, Formative, Socrative, Nearpod – they give you results there and then, which I can share with my trainees and students anytime that I want.
It’s just that we have separated this, there’s so many, thousands of apps, that we have taken out, these apps, you know, attending to that UDL principle.
These apps I’ll keep for multiple means of engagement.
These apps I’ll use for multiple means of representation.
And these apps I’m specifically going to use for action and expression.
When we are having working groups, when we are sitting in the hall, we have five groups.
We are all doing our work.
We are planning it, maybe pencil and paper, but today I don’t need to do that.
Today I can use an app like the Padlet, and I can break up the screen into five different parts.
Five groups are seated there, and each group takes up one column that they are supposed to work on, throughout the pencil paper, or start working in your devices, and everybody’s idea comes there in the screen.
So five groups, five columns into the screen, and everybody knows who is doing what.
So that’s another great thing which ICT has given.
Okay, using the Google sites, it’s not something which I have to pay for.
It’s free for me.
But that’s the one place where all my things are kept.
Everything is there, all programs, all trainings, whatever batches finish their courses here, because we are running the CBID (Community Based Inclusive Development) courses.
We have finished the third batch now, first batch, second batch, third batch, I can make anything in the Google site.
But it’s all available in one place.
I don’t have to go looking for it in, you know, some report, “Where did I keep it? I don’t remember!”
It’s the one-step, uh, one, one-stop shop for me.
If I’m looking for some data, I’m looking for some record, so the Google site even gives me a chance to do that, and all the records are intact there.