"The cen­tre has come a long way from its one com­put­er, reach­ing one stu­dent at a time–to sev­er­al com­put­ers, tablets and smart tele­vi­sions reach­ing sev­er­al stu­dents or a whole class through­out the day," said Char­lene Git­tens, act­ing prin­ci­pal of the Im­mortelle Chil­dren's Cen­tre for Spe­cial Ed­u­ca­tion.

The Im­mortelle Chil­dren's Cen­tre, found­ed in 1980, is one of this coun­try's well-known spe­cial needs schools with a stu­dent pop­u­la­tion of 72 young peo­ple with a range of dis­abil­i­ties. The cen­tre is di­vid­ed in­to a preschool, an in­ter­me­di­ate school and a skills de­part­ment, all of which pro­vide ac­cess to ed­u­ca­tion and vo­ca­tion­al skills train­ing for in­di­vid­u­als with mod­er­ate to se­vere dis­abil­i­ties.

In Ju­ly 2015, IGT (for­mer­ly GTech) part­nered with the Im­mortelle Cen­tre for Spe­cial Ed­u­ca­tion in St Ann's, Port-of-Spain, and do­nat­ed state-of-the-art com­put­er equip­ment to the cen­tre, in­clud­ing iPads, desk­top com­put­ers, mo­bile carts with smart tele­vi­sions and print­ers.

"Over­all, the me­dia tech­nol­o­gy ac­cess has led to a sig­nif­i­cant im­prove­ment in how the class­es are de­liv­ered and the ul­ti­mate learn­ing ex­pe­ri­ence for all of the stu­dents," said Git­tens about the gen­er­ous past do­na­tions of equip­ment from IGT. In light of the sig­nif­i­cant progress achieved by the stu­dents of the cen­tre, IGT said it plans to make an ad­di­tion­al do­na­tion of three mo­bile carts with smart tele­vi­sions.

Af­ter us­ing the tech­nol­o­gy for a lit­tle more than a year now, Git­tens was pleased to re­port that, "The iPads have been a great as­set, as at least five ad­di­tion­al stu­dents now have IT ac­cess. Pri­or to that, a max­i­mum of on­ly ten stu­dents could have been ac­com­mo­dat­ed in a class each day."

The mo­bile carts with smart tele­vi­sions have been par­tic­u­lar­ly use­ful in pro­vid­ing wider ac­cess to the stu­dent body. Git­tens ex­plained: "when the cen­tre re­ceived the units, we were ex­cit­ed be­yond de­scrip­tion as it meant that we would be able to reach more than half of the stu­dent body every day."

The mo­bile smart tele­vi­sions with large screens and clear­er sound have been ide­al for teach­ing an en­tire class, as the units pro­vide a dif­fer­ent form of teach­ing for class­es of up to six chil­dren at a time. The units can be wheeled to ar­eas with greater ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty, which makes them more use­ful to both the stu­dents and the teach­ers.

The smart tele­vi­sions are typ­i­cal­ly used for lec­tures, demon­stra­tions or for in­ter­act­ing with the stu­dents. The ses­sions that are taught vary, and in­clude Math, So­cial Stud­ies, Sci­ence, Cook­ing–and even a ses­sion on un­der­stand­ing emo­tions, us­ing sign lan­guage.

Hav­ing the units in the class­room as a teach­ing tool has re­sult­ed in the stu­dents be­ing more en­gaged and mo­ti­vat­ed by the vi­brant colours, sounds and move­ment they pro­duce. Con­se­quent­ly, the stu­dents are much more at­ten­tive, en­gaged and fo­cused on the sub­ject mat­ter be­ing taught, said a re­lease from IGT.