October 30th, 2008 by Robin Green
Are you designing an online courseware system that you would like to make more accessible to differently abled people? Enabling Dimensions is an organization that can help you develop your e-learning course to suit the needs of people with disabilities. Enabling Dimensions offers training workshops run by a team specialists who collaborate with individuals with disabilities, providing learning solutions and useful services to clients.
Workshop-taught skills include how to develop alternate audio interfaces for existing or under-developed websites, create courseware systems on subjects of interest for differently abled people, and convert existing e-learning content into accessible e-learning courseware. In addition to helping organizations develop their own websites and courseware systems, Enabling Dimensions has developed its own products like SpellWell, an interactive spelling program.
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October 30th, 2008 by Robin Green
Besides impoverished people, another group that benefits from ICT literacy programs is people with disabilities. Acquiring computer skills through nonprofit programs and courseware systems can greatly increase employment opportunities for differently abled persons. Oftentimes people with disabilities are discouraged in school and finish with inadequate skills, especially in the areas of reading and writing, creating an obstacle to obtain higher education and good employment.
Organizations like the ICDL GCC Foundation have created programs for differently abled people, developing modifications to their courseware system to suit those with special needs. Students include the hearing impaired, visually impaired, people with mobility difficulties and cognitive or learning impediments. With the help of dedicated instructors, special courseware systems and other assisting technologies and materials, the foundation hopes to instill confidence and essential computer skills to differently abled people.
October 29th, 2008 by Robin Green
ICT learning systems have the potential to strengthen organizational skills, improve access to information and social services, and promote economic opportunities and political participation. Having said this, it’s essential to investigate and understand the communities you’re trying to help. This goes for educators all across the board and across national and financial sectors: understand your target learners, or accept that your efforts may fail.
If you’re establishing a nonprofit ICT learning system in an indigenous community in Bolivia, you’ll need to find out everything there is to know about the context in which the training course will function. Only when an ICT learning system is fully integrated into the broader community framework will marginalized groups reap meaningful benefits. Successful mediation between groups, local appropriation, and the strengthening of existing social and organizational community structures are also key elements of community empowerment.
October 29th, 2008 by Robin Green
Computer skills educators working in free or cheap computer learning systems act out of a deep conviction that better access to information and ICT skills, just like improved reading and writing skills, can enhance poor peoples’ abilities to make strategic life choices and create the lifestyle they want for themselves.
One computer skills learning system initiative was made by UCLA Extension to reach Los Angeles residents, some of whom had never clicked a mouse or looked at a monitor. The Extension team set up a cyber café, with 16 computer stations and a small snack bar. The course fee was $95 and covered 36 hours of hands-on instruction over 12 weeks. Upon completion, students of the Extension learning system received a certificate of technical expertise and could choose electives in personal finance, advanced computer skills and resume writing. Job interviews and internships were also offered.
October 29th, 2008 by Robin Green
The current discourse around the “digital divide” is often focused on technology rather than the human impact of the gap. However, the poverty problem isn’t due to a lack of technology, but a lack of resources, among other factors like inadequate or inaccessible local learning systems. Lisa Servon argued in 2002 that the digital divide is “a symptom of a larger and more complex problem–the problem of persistent poverty and inequality.”
Besides those in developing countries, what about computer skills learning systems right here, in the United States? The digital divide and lack of computer learning systems is certainly not just a global phenomenon, separating countries into technological haves and have-nots. The gap exists in the richest countries in the world–and it’s often a big one. According to research firm Parks Associates, roughly 20% of Americans are disconnected from the internet and have never used e-mail.
October 29th, 2008 by Robin Green
In India, learning systems like the Project SITA computer skill training program enable the disadvantaged to create a better life. One of SITA’s tenets, increasingly understood among nonprofit social learning systems and organizations worldwide, is that the disadvantaged do not want charity; they want an opportunity to learn and practice suitable skills.
In the computer skill learning system, women are given the opportunity to experience hands-on computer training based on real life exercises. Whenever possible, each trainee is attached to a potential employer. Unlike Project Rising Women which operates only in the city, SITA provides computer skills training courses to women living in urban, suburban, and rural areas. The learning system SITA provides is absolutely free, but every trainee is required to offer part-time services as a trainer’s assistant after completing the course.
October 29th, 2008 by Robin Green
The saying goes: “Educating a man is educating an individual. Educating a woman is educating a family.” Social projects offering computer skills learning systems to disadvantaged women foster the empowerment of impoverished people worldwide. One such organization is Project Rising Women, an Argentine nonprofit that works with a women’s shelter on the edge of the largest ghetto in Buenos Aires, providing a computer technology center and ICT learning system to the women in the shelter.
The project provides the women–often teenage, lower-class, under-educated, abused and/or homeless single mothers–with valuable computer skills that help them gain employment and provide resources to plan a life outside the shelter. The shelter’s learning system volunteers are computer skills teachers from high schools and universities. Additionally, Project Rising Women trains and employs other structurally impoverished women from the ghetto as caretakers in the shelter’s child care center.
October 28th, 2008 by Robin Green
Many people go through their lives wondering why they experience great difficulty in school, without having ever learned basis study strategies. Though anyone can learn how to study, engaging in courseware systems or face-to-face workshops, study skills aren’t developed overnight.
Though there’s no magic formula for successful studying, it’s more than possible to learn how to do it. Studying can be simple, pleasurable and rewarding. Study skill courseware systems stress not only the intellectual grasp of study strategies, but the importance of practice and forming habits.
Have you created your own courseware system that comprehensively guides students through their learning process, helping them to develop stronger study skills? From now until November 15, take advantage of Coggno’s exciting promotion. We will migrate your learning content for you, free of charge.
