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Adapting the Computer Programme Writing with Symbols to the needs of Papua New Guinea Emma Duke-Williams Creative Self Help Special Education Resource Centre, Madang, Papua New Guinea. The largest groups of clients at INTRODUCTION CSHERC are those with learning This paper looks at how I have difficulties and hearing impairment. All attempted to adapt the computer these children are further programme Writing with Symbols to disadvantaged by the fact that the suit the needs of Papua New Guinea. I predominant language of Education is shall look at the adaptations that we English, though local languages are made, and some of the problems faced starting to be introduced in the early when trying to use it. years.

BACKGROUND

I am a VSO volunteer from the UK. I have been in PNG since August 1995 as the Co-ordinator of a Special Education Resource Centre. The Education System in PNG is rather different from that of the UK and, I assume, that of Australia. Education is not compulsory. The curriculum is somewhat less flexible than that of the UK. For each subject and each grade there is a teachers guide, which outlines each lesson for the year. While there is the option for teachers to adapt the curriculum to suit the needs of their own classes, in practice very few do. Special Education as part of the National Education system is very new, and has only been operating for three years. Before that there were a number of Special Schools operating through a number of different organisations. The Special Education policy is that wherever possible children should be integrated into the local schools. There are a number of Special Education Resource Centres around the country. The role of these centres is to support those children with Special Needs in the mainstream classrooms, to provide alternative services for those children who are either too young or too disabled to attend the local school and to offer support for mainstream teachers.

INTRODUCING COMPUTERS Initially I decided that we should keep things here low tech, but wanted to use the concept of symbol assisted materials to help our clients. The production of these was somewhat slow, and the symbols varied; one member of staff was a very good (albeit slow) artist, and produced beautiful pictures, while others hated drawing. After about 18 months, I decided that as we had a computer, we ought to make use of it for material production as well as administration. We decided to buy the programme Writing with Symbols (Widgit software, UK). We got it with Rebus symbols, as I am familiar with them. We later added the PCS symbols. I knew the programme, and felt that it was easy enough to operate that the national staff (none of whom had used a computer before) would be able to learn to use it. I also knew that it would be comparatively easy for me to add extra symbols to suit the needs of Papua New Guinea, as well as translate it into Tok Pisin.

ADAPTING & TRANSLATING One of the main things I was looking at was customising the programme to suit the needs of the local environment. Some symbols were inappropriate for Papua New Guinea, though still

recognisable. For example “house” in the programme has a chimney – a feature of few houses here! We have designed one on stilts, which is very similar to both the prefabricated “Australian” houses, and the locally made bush material houses. There were other things that we wanted here, but don’t exist in the UK for example “mosquito net”. Translating it into Tok Pisin was a greater challenge. Tok Pisin has a limited number of words, and this led to a number of problems. For example “long” in Tok Pisin is a general preposition. It can mean in, on, at, to from, etc. This means that there are a lot of options to cycle through each time the word “long” is required in a piece of text. The other problem that arises because of the limited number of words is that many single words in English are translated into several words in Tok Pisin. For example, “Dentist” is “Dokta bilong tit”. While the programme can recognise two word phrases (e.g. bus stop) for three or more word phrases it’s necessary to put @ instead of a space. This has lead to some confusion for the staff.

USING THE PROGRAMME We are predominantly using the programme to prepare materials to use away from the computer. The main group that we are using these materials with are young deaf children at the centre. None of them can read yet, but they are communicating using a combination of sign language, gesture and symbol cards. For these children we are using English. I am also working with a profoundly deaf woman in her twenties, who has never attended school, and she is starting to read using symbol supported text. However, I have got a few of the deaf children to type single words on the computer. The look of amazement as they produce a picture is quite something!

The two teachers working on the schools programme have had quite a few problems trying to introduce the symbols. Because the staff are not used to using symbols, they tended to try to simply symbolise the entire text. This can be a problem wherever symbols are introduced. However, as the staff are getting more familiar with the techniques necessary for adapting material to symbolisation, we are starting to build up a resource base of materials for Grade 1 and 2. As all the schools in the country are using the same books, we are able to share resources with other centres – something that is not so possible where schools have more choice of material. One teacher is working with a young deaf boy, who is at a Tok Ples (local language) Elementary school. She can’t speak that language, but as many of the children at the school are from other areas the school has two classes; one in the local language and one in Tok Pisin. She has started to prepare materials for Wesley in Tok Pisin, but we are facing the problem of the number for words in Tok Pisin needed to represent a single English word. For example, how do we represent “Dentist” Do we represent the whole phrase as “dentist”, or each word separately so that Wesley can understand when he comes across “Dokta” (doctor) “bilong” (a possessive) or “tit” (teeth) in other texts. Generally it seems best to use the phrases as much as possible, to give meaning to the passage. The need to have many three or more word phrases in Tok Pisin obviously has implications if we were ever to want to have children using the computers. It is more or less inevitable that we would have to use some form of alternate entry system. However, it is important to recognise that whereas in English research tends to show that many children learn to read the words by seeing them under the symbols, in Tok Pisin this will be less likely. Children

here however have the advantage that there are far fewer words to learn to read than there are in English, and they are all spelt phonetically. Work therefore needs to be done with single word and symbol matching. We also need to work with hearing children in Tok Pisin schools to really develop methods suitable for using symbolised texts in Pisin. We also hope to look at the production of health and other information sheets in a format that can be understood by most people, as there is a very high rate of illiteracy.

THE FUTURE There is still a lot more work to be done. The staff that I’m working with need to be more proficient in the selection and adaptation of material; that will be something that comes with experience. The development of materials in Tok Pisin (and other languages as necessary) will need close thought to best use the symbols without getting too unwieldy. Potentially, however, it could be easier than English as there are fewer words to learn to read. I was hoping to include the Graphics for handsigns for the deaf, but we are still waiting for DRA to produce the CDROM (The official sign language here is Australian). I think however that the impact that this will have here will be far less than its potential in Australia as most deaf children grow up in their own communities and do not learn a formal sign language until they start at a Special Education Centre. Most arrive with a set of signs that they have developed in their community. Furthermore, there are few proficient sign language teachers, so the Australian Sign Language vocabulary of the average deaf person is very limited. I am due to leave PNG at Christmas, and so I’m not sure how much more development will take place. I think that the staff at the centre I’m working at will

continue to use the programme – especially for the children on the centre-based programme, and to a lesser extent on the integrated programmes.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Thanks to VSO for purchasing the original programme; British High Commission in Port Moresby for purchasing additional software; UKFSP for additional funding for training staff (and getting me here); Tina Dethridge at Widgit software for answering all my many questions; and finally to all the staff at Creative Self Help Centre.

REFERENCES Dethridge, T and Dethridge, M (1997) Literacy through Symbols, London, David Fulton Publishers. (This book was invaluable for the work, although I haven’t quoted from it in the paper)