Computer training for blind deaf and disabled people in their own home

Tutor Seminar - 09/07/2002

Tutor Seminar held on 09/07/2002 12:28:47 at 16 Porchester Terrace

Present:
Anthony Wigram, Sally Wigram, Avril Hanning, Tracy Pernice, Cliff Docherty, Chris Fredericks, Michelle Delgado, Shofi Ahmed, Patricia Webb, Tracey Fawthrop, Keith Penrose, John Adepoju, Shahab Reza, Simon Smith, Ademola Olayinka, Shangara Singh

Apologies:
Boyko Grigorov, John Howlett, Daniel Gilson, David Somerset, Gabriella Gatward, Gianbattista Montagna, Mary Sullivan, Mohammed Khan, Paul Oamen, Richard Burton, Debbie Brixey

Minutes:
1. Minutes of last meeting

(a) The buddy system / volunteers

It was noted that the buddy system is not yet in place and that the volunteer group will need more supervision and support from the office before it can develop its full potential. This is something which will have to be deferred at present. Doreen Nicholas will encourage volunteers to play a more individual approach.

(b) The bulletin board/ message board

Various ideas were discussed including a separated bulletin board for student matters. Cliff said that this would not be a problem. It was agreed that an email would be sent to tutors to remind them to use the message board.

( c) A positive meeting had been held with LearnDirect which was reported on the website. Further discussions would be held with local organisations. It was agreed that some on going learning provision would be extremely helpful. It was a necessary part of obtaining funding from organisations like the LSC.

(d) The question of homework was raised at this point and is discussed later in the meeting.

2. Administration – Avril Hanning

(i) Lesson Reporting

Avril spoke about lesson reporting and we discussed the new lesson report format. She also asked all tutor to double check all their lesson reports before sending it in to the office, as there were still many mistakes. The charity has really grown over the last year and the lesson reporting has doubled. Avril said that it would save a lot of time if tutors could check their reports before sending it.

(ii) Assessment and Lesson Report 1

The question of whether the assessment and first lesson should be done in one session was discussed.
Keith said that he preferred to do the assessment and lesson report together. Tracy P said that this would depend on the student’s disability and whether they could take both sessions together. Anthony said that he did not want the student to feel to pressured by a 3 to 4 hour session. Avril said that she would prefer the Assessment to be separate from the lesson report and that in this way the student’s did not lose out on another visit from the tutor. Anthony said in order to be fair to all tutors that if the assessment and lesson report 1 was done together tutors would be paid a fixed fee of £50. Keith stated that students were very eager to start and that they liked to start with lessons immediately. Patricia says that what she does is inform the student’s beforehand that she will only be doing the assessment and that the lessons will be done on another day. Avril said that this was a good idea.
It was agreed that we needed more time to do some more research into this and that we need to think about it first. Anthony also stated that tutors should use their own initiative about this.

(iii) Cancellations

Simon Smith raised the subject of cancellations. He said that there were many cancellations which disrupted tutors diaries and he felt that some fee for cancellations could be paid.

Patricia stated that we should consider paying tutors something if there were more than 3 cancellations a week by students. Chris suggested that we should fine students £5 for any cancellations. Tracey F suggested that that we should state in the student’s terms and conditions that they would have to pay a fine for the cancellation of a lesson. Cliff said that we have to be careful to regard the fact that many disabled people cannot get to college and this was the reason for them applying to U Can Do I.T. where there was more flexibility.

Anthony summed up. He said that this was a serious problem which would have to be addressed by the office. Further research was needed. A cancellation charge might be appropriate. This could vary depending on how long before the lesson the cancellation was made. It was agreed that further ideas would be circulated to the tutors.

(iv) Invoicing

Avril reminded the tutors of double-checking all their invoices and reports before sending it in to the office. She said that if all tutors played their part it would be much easier for us to get things done speedily.

3. Structure of Course

Anthony invited the tutors to discuss the idea that students should make notes and keep a diary of their work while the course was in progress. It was important for students to be able to work on their own once the course was finished. Shangara said that notes do help the student’s retain more information. Patricia said that she encourages her students to use a diary and her visually impaired students also have diaries via voice recognition and that they always have a reference point when she is not there.

Shahab said that he felt that if his students make notes that they do retain more information. John agreed with him in this regard. John also said that he sets homework every week and communicates with his students via phone or email to see how they doing with their homework and this is working out fine. His students are doing very well and have concentrated on doing their homework. Keith said that he thought notes were a good idea but said that if they did this during the lesson it would really slow things down. Patricia said that tutors should set different tasks of homework every week. She said that if they have their set tasks to do it would keep the momentum going and motivate the students. Keith also said that he found that students lie about doing their homework and that some students are not very bothered about it. Anthony said that he was now checking all lesson reports and would like to send emails to students who had done particularly well or those who had failed to do their homework. Keith said that Anthony’s confrontational approach works for him but not for the tutors and they need to encourage students in a different way. Patricia said that there are some student’s that are chuffed when they receive an email even if it says that they have not done the homework.

4. Student Recruitment

Cliff Docherty went through what he has been doing in the last few months. He said that recruitment has been a bit slow the last few months while he was working on the Annual Report.

He stated that the key recruitment successes were Motability Magazine, he stated that we have had steady referrals from Action for Blind People. He said that tutors are also referring students to us regularly. He mentioned that the Dial a Ride magazine circulation is impending with our article also appearing in it. He also mentioned that we would also be featuring in the Hearing Concern Magazine and various local papers.

He mentioned that all the promotional material is ready and that tutors should feel free to send out as much as possible. Cliff said that his next target group is doctor’s surgeries. He also mentioned that we needed more publicity and that if anybody knew someone famous that would promote the charity to let us know. Tracey F said that she knows of a parents group in which we could be able to contact children with disabilities and how we could help them. Cliff said that he would look into that.

5. Funding Update- Chris Frederick

Chris spoke about his fundraising for the charity and how challenging he was finding it. Chris mentioned how difficult it is to obtain government funding and that the Learning and Skills Council and the London Development Agency has not funded us this year. He said however, that this would not deter us and that we will have to rethink our next application. He mentioned that we are currently working on an application to the Lottery Bid. He also mentioned that we got a cheque this morning by the Richard Vere Foundation for £2,000.

Student Fees

Chris suggested that there is another way of raising money and that this would be by increasing student fees and having a sliding scale of costs for students on certain incomes. He mentioned that some students could pay more towards their course than others and that those students who could afford to pay more should pay more for the course. Chris mentioned that there are many charities that are only willing to help students who are on income support and that those students who can afford to pay for the course will pay something towards it. He suggested that we should ask a third person such as a social worker to verify the amount of income each student gets per week. He said that we could ask for photocopies of a benefit book or copy of a bank statement. Anthony said that the sliding scale should be thought of very carefully.

Chris said that some students could use the Lion’s Club who would sponsor them to do the course. Simon said that this would put students off and that getting further documents would mean extra work for students and should be reconsidered. He also said that a lot of students would feel stigmatised in joining a club and that the club may use the student for their own benefit and said that he did not find this encouraging.

Anthony said that fundraising is extremely difficult and that we have to look at other avenues of raising money. Patricia said that there are quite a few of her students who would be able to pay more. Keith stated that some of his student’s are running their own business and are making a good living out of it.

Anthony asked the tutors if they would feel comfortable in asking for evidence of benefits student’s are on. Shangara said that he would not be happy doing this. Patricia mentioned that if they did have to prove their income that they would be more honest about it and Anthony said that this was a good point. Shahab asked whether we could not obtain this information from their national insurance number but Simon said that this information would not be given to outsiders. Keith said that student’s do need to pay to feel satisfaction. Anthony said that a fees increase would make a big difference. The tutors agreed that they would feel reasonably comfortable in asking for proof on benefits. John Adepoju mentioned that a student of his would like to make a contribution to the charity and Anthony told him to give her the office number.

6. Development- Cliff Docherty

(i) Annual Report

Cliff mentioned that the Annual Report was ready for distribution and that he would be sending copies to tutors and if they needed anymore to contact him in the office.

(ii) Photographs

Cliff mentioned that we do need new pictures constantly and that tutors should send in as many pictures as they can. He mentioned that the pictures can be scanned and that tutors should feel free to send him the negatives of film photographs as these produce higher quality results. He also asked that digital photos be 1024x768 or larger. He thanked everyone for all their efforts in helping him with the Annual Report.

7. Tutor Training - Patricia Webb

Patricia Webb spoke about the Jaws training which she does on a one to one basis with the tutors at her home. She encouraged all tutors to do the training and Shahab said that he would like to learn, Patricia suggested that he trains in Jawbone. John Adepoju and Shangara Singh also mentioned that they would like to learn Jaws.

Simon Smith mentioned that he would like to learn the Dragon Dictate.

Patricia also handed out Supernova packages to tutors Simon mentioned that he had done the Action for Blind training course and that it was really good. Shofi said that he also went for this training and enjoyed it. Patricia also mentioned that there is a new service, which reads your emails to you, namely MSN Messenger and Smart Butler.

8. Simon Smith – User Friendly Lesson Report System

Simon Smith suggested that a much simpler form of lesson reporting could be created if a data base was set up on the website. He said that this would not be a difficult thing to do and would be most effective.

Shangara suggested that we have the lesson report system on the website and that we would only then need to log on to it and the reports would be filed and processed all in one. In this way tutors can fill in the form online and this would be updated straight to the database. Once this is set up it will automatically send and email to the student and tutor and office.

Patricia said that she found using a disk very useful and that it is a way of keeping track of all lesson reports done. She said that it was so much easier on a disk. Ademola said that he also found disks to be extremely useful and convenient.

Avril also asked tutors to keep a copy on disk and some emails do get lost along the way and it would be a good back up system for all tutors to have.

Simon said that we could make it part of our web page and Shangara said that it could be received as email. Shangara said that there would be an automatic filing system on the database.

Anthony said that a problem could be that it would be somewhat impersonal. Simon said that it should cost between £500- £1000. Simon said that scripting could be hard and that we needed to get a professional in to do it.
It was agreed that this suggestion would be further considered.

9. Distance/Long–Term Learning

Anthony mentioned that we will have to focus on this in the future and that it was important for fundraising.

10. Date of AGM – 16th of October

Anthony invited all tutors to come to the next AGM, which will be held at the Abbey Community Centre and 12pm. All tutors said that they would let us know beforehand.

11. Website- Cliff Docherty

Cliff mentioned that the Annual Report is ready and that it is also available on the website in plain text.

12. Any other business

(i) Provision of Computers

Shahab said that he had many deaf students who want to learn how to use the internet but that they do not have a computer and asked whether there was any way to help them. Anthony said that unfortunately we could not help in this way as it is a job in itself and that we have tried it before but there is an enormous amount of work which needs to be done. Programmes also need to be added to the computer and these are very expensive and we also found that some students might sell the computers and not use it at all. There was also the problem of storage of the computers, the delivery of the computers and then we also have the problem of the maintenance of the computer. Anthony said that the bigger charities such as the RNID and RNIB do not do this because they realise that it is too big of a project to take on as well.

(ii) Extention of U Can Do I.T. Course

Shahab also asked whether we could teach students more such as Word, Excel and Spreadsheets and Anthony said that at the moment it would be quite difficult for us because we do not have the funding at the moment. Anthony mentioned however, that we would have follow up sessions in the future.

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