Reflection of the day - 10.07.2014

Today's presentations were all about IT for people with disabilities. They were presented by the Romanian team who are students of Special Education, which is, you know, kindda my area.

Catrinel Frincu talked us about Technology-assisted Inclusive Education for Students with Intellectual Disabilities. She presented some apps which can be used in tablets. Unfortunately, tablets aren't generalized in Portugal due to high cost, but they sure would be of priceless value to work with children with intelectual difficulties.

Afterwards, it was the time of Andreea Hiciu. She talked about Assistive Technologies for Children with Dysgraphia and also presented some apps for tablets. Same problem, though.

Anamaria Marian presented us Assistive Technologies for Students with Hearing Impairments. We tried some of the apps on her tablet which was very enlightening. The game she prepared for us to was funny and challenging: try to read no somebody else's lips.

Later, Lavinia Mateut spoke to us about the Role of Technologies and Support Centers in Universities for the Inclusion of Visually Impaired Students envolving us in a small exercise of deciphering a message written in Braille. It was also pretty interesting and she was very thoughful by leaving us a beautiful message printed with a Braille printer. Thank you Lavinia!

Alina Mosic explained to us the Role of Technology in the Enhancement of Quality of Life for Persons with Motor Disabilities leading us to an interesting discussing on quality of life for disabled people.

I was curious about today's presentations because of their topics related to Special Education and find me thinking how great teachers these young girls will surely become as they have this concern so early in their lives, as they are still so young. I was surprised to hear that they volunteer in a center to help students with visual impairment. That's really, really great! I'm proud to have known you and hope you all many, many hapiness in your lives!

Anyway, these young students are very updated in apps for tablets and presented us some really useful ones to work with several kinds of impairments. Unfortunately, most of them are not freeware and tablets in schools are still sometime away in Portugal.

But our day was not over yet.

Estonian student 

Romanian tradicional food

Tonight we had the Romanian and Estonian night and we found out two beautiful countries which I had no idea how'd be. Romania with beautiful wildlife and historical buidings and Estonia with beautiful and happy people and all the technology, wow, it's almost like a dream come true! Feel sad, though, when I hear that in January there are only 2* hours sunlight/day. That should be really depressing for us Portuguese, who have so much sunlight all year. Oh well, nothing is perfect!

*ATTENTION, PLEASE! My fault, my mistake, sorry Kärt! It's not 2 hours sunlight, it's 5 hours but in June they have 2 hours darkness, yehey!!! It's getting better, maybe I will consider it! Thank you for your correction, Kärt!