Here it is, my long overdue, full write-up on the tech fundraiser for Brasil! After several months of fundraising, the goal of $3000 to purchase modern learning technologies for kids with disabilities in Brasil was achieved. I cannot thank enough the people who contributed, and will do so again at the end of this blog. You can read my initial statement about the fundraiser here.

After some careful evaluation of how the $3000 AUD should be spent, the following items were purchased:

• 4x iPad mini 32gb with screen protector and STM cases
• 1x Toshiba i5 Processor Laptop with Windows 8 and touch-screen
• Microsoft Office 2013
• 1x LEAP Motion Controller
• $100 worth of Apps from iTunes

Initially I was going to go with the full sized iPad 4 16gb model, but after trialling a colleague's iPad mini on a number of occasions I decided that the mini was a more suitable device. This also meant that I was able to get 32gb of storage, which was far more advantageous in a setting where visuals are very important and internet connectivity is not readily available.

Touchdown in Brasil
Setting up numerous iPads is something I am very familiar with, so I left the creation of an iTunes account and purchasing of apps for when I arrived in Brazil. The apps purchased were based on what I knew worked for my students at Jackson School and some careful research into apps that are available for students with hearing impairments. I also made sure that there were plenty of creative apps that would allow the creation of lesson materials and resources such as with Explain Everything, Book Creator, Popplet, and the now free iWorks suite. There are so many amazing apps out there (as we all know), however, many of them are only available in English. I understand that there's a lot of extra investment involved in translating apps for multiple languages, but there are so many kids worldwide who are missing out on their potential educational benefits.

During the week of the 24th of September I met up with Maria Helena Pereira, teacher of students with hearing impairments and other disabilities on the island of Itaparica, Bahia, Brasil. At the inception of the fundraiser, Helena was working full-time at one school with a class of students with hearing impairments. Sadly, but also somewhat fortunately, she lost 2 days of her work at the school with these students due to budget cuts. Being the skilled teacher that she is, Helena picked up the lost days of work at another special education school, Centro de Atendimento Educational Especial (CAEE), Vicente Goncalves de Silva. I think it's wonderful that this tech gear is now being made available to more students, despite Helena having lost some of her working hours at her original school.

Throughout the 4 days I had set aside to work with Helena I was able to visit the 2 schools she works at, which both have a unique and equally wonderful group of staff and students. Each evening on the island was spent training Helena on how to use the new equipment, apps, management software and general troubleshooting. I must express my sincerest appreciation towards my wife for taking time with Helena and utilising her own knowledge of iPads to explain just how much is possible with the device in her native language of Brazilian Portuguese. If you've ever lead Professional Development (PD) on tech in a normal setting, then you can imagine just how much harder it is to get your point across when translating your thoughts into another language.

The first school we visited was CAEE Vicente Goncalves de Silva. This was the mixed special needs school that Helena recently started working at. This school caters to a wide age group of students, from kids as young 6 to adults who wouldn't have any other support communities or groups to attend otherwise. It was a very humble setting that clearly had some absolutely wonderful members of staff working with the relatively limited resources they had. The staff and students were all extremely welcoming and the completely open and honest curiosity of the students further solidified why I enjoy working in special needs education. 

After greeting the staff and many of the students at CAEE, we set up for a presentation and demonstration of the iPads, laptop and LEAP Motion in the main section of the school. I don't normally like to demonstrate stuff too much (much like when teaching) and I wanted to test/reinforce my beliefs around the ease of accessibility that devices like the iPad provide to students and teachers. Rather than write a whole lot about this part of the visit and the students and staff's reactions, I will let you watch the video posted below. I must say though, it was amazing when a local capoeira instructor brought in some of her students for a roda (circle in which capoeira is played). It had been many months since I had last trained capoeira but this experience was one of the most amazing I've ever had. One of the students from CAEE absolutely ripped it up and his passion for playing the lead instrument in capoeira, the berimbau, was awe inspiring.

Once our visit to CAEE was over, Helena and I continued to work together in the evenings and prepare for the final visit to her other school where she teaches a specialised class of students with hearing impairments, many of whom are profoundly deaf. An interesting thing to note is that most of her students are deaf due to their mothers contracting Rubella during pregnancy, a disease preventable by vaccination. In some remote areas of Brazil, like the island of Itaparica, immunisation coverage can be poor, resulting in the spread of the disease. The rates of rubella are very low in Australia, mostly due to effective vaccination campaigns, and so we see very few cases of rubella-induced deafness here.

Helena has been teaching this class of students for around 8 years and has several of her original students still with her in the class. Helena learned the Brasilian system of sign language, LIBRAS (LIngua BRAsileira de Sinais), because she had a pre-existing hearing impairment, which meant she may one day have to use sign language as a form of communication in her daily life. Before Helena's arrival, there was no sign language teacher in Itaparica, so students with hearing impairments had very little support. Now, as still the only teacher of sign language on the island inhabited by around 23,000 people, many students and families depend upon her skills as an educator.

A really amazing date coincided with the day we visited Helena's other school - The National Day for Hearing Impaired. Unfortunately, the school's staff were on strike as part of a statewide protest to the current government in Bahia not passing on national pay increases for teachers. Sound familiar? Regardless, Helena's students were determined to come to school on this day, which was a truly touching gesture. I'm very sorry to write that the majority of the video footage I had, particularly of the students' presentation about Australia, Brazil, and Bahia, was lost during my recent computer upgrade. The kids went to so much effort in their performance about each Australia, Brazil, and Bahia's flags, detailing things about them that I never knew about.

I introduced the students to the iPad and set them off in some apps. Like the time spent at CAEE, I wanted the kids to take control and independence with the devices, and that's exactly what happened. Initially the kids started on some apps from Shiny Things like Quick Math and Match Blitz, whilst others went on to make video clips and trailers in iMovie. I also made sure that all the kids got to experience the LEAP Motion and work with an awesome app called Sortee, something that has tremendous potential as an assistive educational tool. 

After about an hour together it was time for the students and I to part ways. In that short time I got to see just how much these devices can potentially help these kids, particularly when lead by a great teacher like Helena. The companionship that was demonstrated between the students was tremendous and the support that older students gave their younger peers was simply wonderful.

What has the impact been?
After realising how much more can be done when iPads have internet access, Helena sought to get WiFi-enabled modems for her schools. During my last day with Helena, we spent an afternoon with family back in Salvador where I got to demonstrate all the extra features that WiFi access can provide iPads with. The use of visuals is paramount in her work with students with hearing impairments, so upon realising how easy it was to get pictures from Google to make eBooks in Book Creator, Helena was convinced about the importance of gaining WiFi access at her schools. I also showed Helena how easy it was to transfer data between iPads using AirDrop and Google Drive. These two features are also a tremendous help as it allows her to create copies of documents and materials for her students. 
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B941UE2HqRd_VFBBQTdDeHdIYnM/edit?usp=drive_web
Aside from the benefits that have been gained from WiFi access now being available in one of the schools, CAEE, Helena's students have begun taking the lead in tutoring roles for their younger peers. My favourite book that Helena recently shared with me was an Alphabet Manual of Brazilian sign language. You can check out the book in this link.

Something that really stood out when I went to both of the schools was the absence of extra assistance from different therapists, such as physical therapists and speech pathologists. In first world countries we are often (not always) lucky to have these great people working with our kids from a young age or within our schools. It's only when they're not present that you see their positive impact from a different perspective. Kids who should have better fine-motor skills or be much further along in their speech development simply weren't. It is for this reason that I also believe technology has a far greater impact and potential to improve these kids' education and lives. Something like the LEAP Motion now allows kids to practice coordination activities using their hands in real-time. Numerous apps on the iPad can be bought for a great price that will help various other deficits in these kids' abilities. Take care of your therapists, they're doing a great job.

Where to next?
The team at AssistiveWare were awesome enough to donate a copy of Proloquo2go and Pictello for the 2013 fundraiser even though they're not applicable yet in Brazil. Proloquo2go is set to be made available with Portuguese voices in 2014. In the future I would like to investigate which families would be able to provide a safe environment or setting for their child to have their own iPod Touch that has Proloquo2go installed on it so they can finally have a voice when they're around others who don't know sign language. More kids deserve to have powerful, life-assisting apps like Proloquo2go or other Augmented or Alternative Communication (AAC) tools. 

I will continue to follow up on the current project and provide Helena with the best support I can across our world. Judging by the numerous eBooks I have been receiving I think everything is going just fine.

To those who made it possible
I am still in awe of the support that people demonstrated throughout this fundraiser. From the big supporters right through to the little supporters, the good friends who helped out and the people who I've never met, my guitar shredding buds, and to the kids in school with barely a few cents that helped out. You all made a difference!

Have you heard of Book Creator for iPad? If you haven't, do yourself and your kids/students a favour and start downloading it on your iPad right now then continue reading this article.
For well over a year now I have been using Book Creator for iPad with my students at Jackson School, a special education K-12 school in Melbourne, Australia. This app has become such a big deal for us that it was quickly put on our Essential Apps list for students and teachers, which is a hard list to get on to. If there's ever anything I use on my iPad to impress parents, other educators, or iPad skeptics, this is the app I turn to. 

Working in a school with special needs students has numerous challenges, and much like any school, essential literacy and numeracy skills are an important part of the curriculum. What Book Creator has enabled my students and colleagues at Jackson School to do goes beyond anything that was previously possible. Many of our students have developmental issues that impact negatively on their ability to communicate what goes on in their minds, such as fine-motor coordination (hand-writing), general reading comprehension, recognition and identification of letters and key words, and logical structuring of sentences and ideas. These are only a small range of challenges our students face and can be found right through our year groups from kindergarten to upper high school. 

I still vividly remember a discussion I had with a colleague when we first introduced Book Creator to Jackson School. Students in her class displayed a range of issues when working within literacy activities, including speech disorders, low confidence when reading in front of others, and of course issues like the ones I outlined previously. Book Creator was used on one iPad during a cooking class as the students worked with their teacher. The device was used as a collaborative tool to list the recipe, photograph and film steps, and to add a student voice. The speech aspect was added to the story whilst the class were waiting for the food to cook, and this was where Book Creator truly shined. The teacher showed me how kids who were always shy about reading in front of their peers read and recorded their voice to the book with absolute confidence. However, the real tearjerker was hearing a student who has a diagnosed speech impediment read 3 full sentences without missing a beat. He was confident in front of his peers and spoke like he'd never spoken before. 

Over the 18 months or so that we've been using Book Creator at Jackson School I've watched as staff have used it in myriads of ways. In our Early Year's classes it's regularly used to teach everything from English to identifying shapes around the school. When students go on camps they always come back with huge books made on the bus ride back that detail their experiences, utilising all forms of multimedia. We've even had a school performance where students pre-performed their fairy tale as a book and then projected it to the crowd whilst adding extra real-time elements. Genius!

Despite all these wonderful experiences I think the most excited and amazed I've ever been by Book Creator was during my recent trip to Brasil. As part of a fundraiser (read about it here) I made sure that Book Creator was on the iPads that were being given to the teacher, even though the app is currently only in English (let's hope we can fix that soon, Book Creator Team). After training the teacher on how to use the app in some very rough English to Portuguese translations I showed her how to share books using Google Drive. Around 5 weeks have passed since the teacher, Helena, received the iPads and I regularly receive incredible books from her and her students. Did I mention that these kids have hearing impairments and other disabilities? Just take a look at this book. Helena's older students who are much more knowledgable on Brasilian sign language regularly create books for their younger peers and use it to tutor them. You don't have to think too hard about what the positive flow on effects are from having such a resource.

I'm a big fan of this app and cannot wait to get it into the hands of every single student next year when our 1:1 iPad program kicks off. The next phase of parent interaction and stories from home is something I'm eagerly awaiting to experience and I can't wait to see how it will enrich out students and their family's lives. 

Cheers!

Mathieu Marunczyn
@iMathieu85

In case you missed it I created a fundraising program several months ago in order to purchase some modern learning technologies for kids with hearing impairments in Itaparica, Bahia, Brasil. You can read about the project here. Needless to say, the goal was achieved thanks to the help and generosity of many great people, including educators, friends, family, people from around the world, and in a few cases, people I've never even met! 

I'm currently still in Brasil and away from my home computer which I use for editing photos and videos. As you can expect I have numerous gigs of video and photo data. That said, I have a few lovely snaps and a video to share with you all. Before I get into that I want you all to know just what has been set in motion in a summarised manner. Don't worry, I have A LOT more to write once I'm back in Melbourne.

• $3000 AUD was raised and used to purchase 4x iPad mini 32gb units with covers and screen protectors, a new Toshiba touch-screen laptop, ios apps, Office, and LEAP Motion unit and apps.
• All goods were handed over to Professora Maria Helena Pereira during the week of the 24th of September on Itaparica Island, Bahia, Brasil.
• Helena now teaches at two schools 5 days per week, thus more students will be benefiting from these tools than initially thought.
• Daily training was provided to Helena so that she understood how to use all the devices appropriately and to their fullest potential.
• The devies were EXTREMELY well received by students and other staff members.
• Helena has already begun utilising the iPads in ways I had never thought of or experienced.

Again, I would like to say thank you to everyone who was involved in this fundraiser. This simply wouldn't have happened without you.

Expect to hear from me again with a full write up in the next 2 weeks.

Cheers!!!

Mathieu Marunczyn

@iMathieu85