Onam, the harvest festival of Kerala was celebrated with great fun and frolic by the differently abled children at SPACE on the 13th of September. The students got the opportunity to socialize with everyone by rocking one another in the swing. The celebration was made special by the onakkaligal played by the students.
A training programme was conducted on the 9th of September for the teachers of Mridula Sparsham, a Centre for children with special needs. Four teachers were given training on the educational activities in the free software GCompris, childsplay, Pysycache, Tux math, Tux typing and KLettres. They were also briefed about the activities that could be done online from sites such as starfall.com, jacob's lesson, softschool.com and sheppard software. Custom live CDs of SPACE were given to the centre to help them assist their students in their educational activities.
SPACE joined hands with Sree Narayana Training College,Nedunganda,Thiruvananthapuram-UGC sponsered National Workshop on ‘Knowledge Management and Instructional Technology' on 23rd and 24th August 2013. Resource Persons from SPACE took an introductory session on Freesoftware-birth, evolution and why we exist. Also introduced the participants to Learning Management system and Moodle. Then there was a hands-on session on moodle. Almost 100 participants attended the sessions.
A summer camp 'Snehakkoodu' was organised at Insight centre to nurture creative, intellectual and social skills in special children. 25 students participated in the camp which was held from 22 to 26 April 2013. Activities and games were held to encourage interaction, communication, concentration, besides giving children exposure to various new experiences with the help of technology. An interaction among parents was also held guided by Mr. Brahmanayakam Mahadevan, Patron of Focus Forth India. On the final day the students exhibited their creative talents through a skit titled 'snehakkoodu'.
Insight centre for special children observed Autism Awareness Day on 2 April 2013. It became part of the Light it Up Blue campaign when all the students, parents and teachers arrived at the centre dressed in blue.
A month long training programme for the visually challenged got underway in Kannur and Kozhikode districts in April 2013. As part of its efforts to reach out to the visually disabled in the north of Kerala, SPACE networked with Kerala Federation of the Blind (KFB) to organise the programme. In Kannur, the training was held at the KFB unit from 15 April 2013 and at Vocational Training Centre of KFB at Kundayithode in Kozhikode from 17 April 2013. 22 visually challenged students attended the programme.
SPACE's summer camp that promotes maker culture among children got underway at its office today. The 12 day camp will hold workshops for students from class 6 to 8 to introduce them to basic electronics, robotics, programming and various web technologies. Using their creative prowess and logical ability children will develop 3D games, mobile apps, animation videos etc at the camp.
Read the blog here http://spacesummercamp.wordpress.com/
Art, nature and technology converged at the Museum Bandstand in Thiruvananthapuram when members of SPACE, Beginow, and FSUG-TVM gathered to celebrate Hardware Freedom Day 20 April 2013. Musical notes sprang from plantains at the touch of fingers, robots darted across the floor in hot pursuit of its spectators and a 3 D printer coughed up physical replicas of three dimensional images fed to it creating quite a stir among those gathered at there.
SPACE will join hands with Beginow and Free Software Users Group-Trivandrum to organise Hardware Freedom Day celebrations in Thiruvananthapuram. A series of programmes will be held at the Bandstand , Napier Museum from 3 p.m to 7 p.m on 20 April 2013. During the event, various open hardware projects will be demonstrated. These include international initiatives like Arduino for robotics, Raspberry Pi for low cost computing, RepRap 3D printing technology and the Indian project expEYES for scientific experimentation, initiated by the Malayalee scientist Dr Ajith Kumar.
