General News
27 March, 2024
iPads to support students
Giving a “voice” to children facing communication challenges, a Victorian not-for-profit agency has provided free iPads to students enrolled at the Maryborough Education Centre’s (MEC) Specialist Setting. State Schools’ Relief (SSR), in...
Giving a “voice” to children facing communication challenges, a Victorian not-for-profit agency has provided free iPads to students enrolled at the Maryborough Education Centre’s (MEC) Specialist Setting.
State Schools’ Relief (SSR), in partnership with Bank First andthe Australian Schools Canteen Association, is working towards removing barriers to educational engagement by distributing more than 400 tablets across the state — including three locally to prep students Donaro Mclean, Josh Gloury and Everleigh Castanelli.
Impacted by limited verbal abilities, these students will now be able to use the iPads to communicate with greater ease.
In MEC’s grant application to SSR, the school wrote that, if its students were successful — “it would help with the challenges they face with communicating day-to-day needs”.
It will give them, it further stated, “a voice and allow them to be able to communicate a whole range of topics such as how they are feeling, if they are hungry or need to go to the bathroom, if they need help with their school work, or what toys they would like to play with at recess”.
The iPads will feature an Augmentative and Alternative Communication application called Proloquo, which allows users to express themselves by tapping on symbols or pictures accompanied by words.
Without this digital support, according to MEC specialist wellbeing officer Coby Polinelli, the students would face a number of struggles daily.
“They might be pointing at things and then [we try] to guess what they’re trying to communicate and it might take 10 different guesses before we actually [get it],” he said.
“But the iPads allow them to be able to communicate instantly and it takes away that frustration for them and there’s no more guesswork [on our part].
“It’s fantastic — it puts them on a level playing field with other students in our setting, who can communicate verbally.”
Access to equipment like this also elevates the standard and offerings of the school, Mr Polinelli said.
“In the [specialist] setting, there’s a lot of different abilities and students and as a school it shows that we’re able to work around any difficulties our students might face,” he said.
“If someone’s missing something, we work to get them that.
“It makes our school more inclusive and that’s what we’re trying to achieve — we want all our kids to flourish equally.”