Coding Workshop for State School for the Deaf

We had an amazing three day coding workshop for 45 students from the State school for the Deaf. It was attended by 45 students, 20 volunteers, 4 trainers, 2 sign language interpreters and 6 Coordinators. Day one had activities which includes Word Challenge, Introduction to Computer Basics, Introduction to Microsoft Office and an outdoor game called Charade.
Day two was a fun filled day where the children were eager and ready to learn. Activities held included Blogging and Social Media and also a fun challenging Human Centered Design Activity known as the spaghetti challenge. The final day climaxed the three day workshop.

On the final day of the three day workshop, a student of the Tetteh-Ocloo State School for the Deaf signed the opening prayer. The MC, Miss Annette Agyare introduced the audience to the activities for the day which included; the lime and spoon game, Website Development Training, working on HTML projects, Code Pitching and Innovation Challenge and Presentation of Awards and Certificates.
Lime and Spoon game
The “lime and spoon game,” was the first activity of the day and it started with the students being grouped into four teams, and each team consisted of ten members. Selected words from the Computer Basics Lesson were attached to the limes and the students’ task was to identify if the words were either hardware or software words. This exercise was to help refresh their memories on what they had learnt the previous days. Students’ performance was very encouraging and they demonstrated that they had understood the previous lessons in Computer Basics with their answers.
Web Development
The next activity of the day was a tutorial on Web Development. The students were divided into two classes and each class had 2 trainers and about 4 mentors and volunteers to supervise. The focus was to use Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) to create their websites. The Students took a 30 minute snack break. Drinks and sausage rolls were served at exactly 10:45am.
The Students from the Tetteh-Ocloo State School for the Deaf worked on their HTML projects in groups of 10. Their task was to create a website, educating the world about the deaf community and people with hearing and speech difficulties. Each group had to put together a presentation of their project and explain the methodology used in creating the website.
In their presentations, each group chose a representative to explain the HTML tags and codes they used in their projects and also the concept and layout of their projects. A summary of their presentations revealed that, most parents neglect their children because they have hearing and speech difficulties and this affects their studies. To solve this, they created a website to inform the world about their uniqueness. These websites also include their stories, creative art and also, their different talents.
The best team won amazing prizes which included exercise books, Sketchpads, pencil cases with sticky notes, pencils, and erasers, branded UNESCO and Soronko Academy pens and wristbands. Every student was awarded with certificates for their participation in the three Day Coding Workshop.
David Danquah, a student of the Tetteh-Ocloo State School for the Deaf signed the closing remarks of the workshop and everyone joined for group pictures.
In conclusion, the three day workshop was a fun-filled experience where the students learnt about Computer Basics and Microsoft Office, Blogging and Social Media and Web Development using HTML.
They were able to use technology as their voice to communicate and had a lot of amazing ideas on how to use technology to reach thier full potential. We look forward to working more with the State School of the deaf to teach them how to create technology, become economically indepedndent and show that thier disability is not an inability.

Video of the workshop is available here https://youtu.be/U0Cz4tItlwU