Special education students benefit from online learning

TDT | Manama

More than 9,500 differently-abled students in the Kingdom are now continuing their education by utilising the country’s digital learning initiatives as the Kingdom continues to battle the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak. Helping them in their ‘special effort’ is the Ministry of Education with its remote learning portal, which allows schools and education institutions to continue lessons online through portals and broadcast channels. The move follows a recent announcement by the Ministry of Education regarding the closure of educational institutions until further notice as a precaution against the global Coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak.

According to the latest statistics, 97.5 per cent of the differently-abled students here are making good avail of the e-lessons on the ministry’s educational portal for which it together with the Information & eGovernment Authority has partnered with Amazon Web Services (AWS). “So far the online lessons benefited 9, 545 special education students,” said Special Education Director Khalid Al-Saidi adding that efforts are underway to expand its reach. “49 autistic and 10 hearing-impaired students at mainstream classes are having a marked use of the portal”, he pointed out. “Other categories of special education students are also benefiting from the initiative.”

The directorate said it has also reached out to students suffering from cancel and sickle cell at public hospitals to get reassured about their health and studies. Besides, the authority is also in touch with parents of 541 partially integrated students suffering from autism and mental disabilities over cellphones, WhatsApp and ClassDojo app. Launched earlier this month, Class Dojo app is a free service, which, according to Khalid Al Saeedi, Director of Special Education in the Ministry of Education, can be used by parents to enhance positive behaviour among students using symbols and encouraging points based on specified behaviour standards.

In an earlier statement, Education Ministry’s Undersecretary for Resources and Services, Dr Mohammed Mubarak Juma a, said that its virtual classes are a ‘great success’ with over 500,000 students making use of the live lessons. According to Assistant Undersecretary for Planning and Information at the Education Ministry, Nawal Al-Khater, the educational portal, Edunet contains 408,000 digital materials, including 151,000 activities, 60,000 discussions, 74,000 lessons and 124,000 enriching materials prepared by teachers between February 23 and April 14. Google Analytics says, a total of 477012 Unique Users had entered Edunet between March 14 and April 14.