iPad for Every Special Education Teacher in Israel

Introduction

Israel's Athena Fund, a nonprofit organization empowering teachers, has launched a new international Facebook group, in English, for parents of children with special needs.

Main Item

The Athena Fund is engaged in a unique program - iPad for Every Special Education Teacher in Israel.

According to the program, about 10,000 special education teachers in Israel will receive iPads with specialized software and applications for students with special needs and various disabilities. The new Facebook group contains posts in a number of areas of interest concerning parents of children with special needs, as well as information on Athena's special education activities.

Athena's iPad for Every Special Education Teacher in Israel program is designed to empower special education teachers by enabling them to communicate better with their students, gain access to a wider range of teaching materials, and expose their students to the world of advanced technology.

The iPad is especially important in special education.

In addition to it being an extremely effective tool for the teacher in the classroom, studies have shown that the iPad allows children with special needs to communicate better and more effectively with their environment. For example, the iPad enables children with autism, even those who had never before communicated with their parents and their environment, to interact with their surroundings in a most exciting manner. Many parents have expressed how the iPad has helped them open a window into the soul of their special needs children, and enabled them to talk with the children about current and high-level subjects. This has led to a dramatic improvement in the lives of special needs children and their families. The distribution of iPads to special education teachers will enable them to help students fulfill their potential.

"The new Facebook group is another milestone in the Athena Fund's activity in the special education sphere," said Uri Ben-Ari, Athena Fund's founder and president. "We've received excellent responses to our iPad for Every Special Education Teacher program from parents of children with special needs. As a result, we decided to involve parents in efforts to promote special education and to inform them about various things that may help them."

The new Facebook group for parents of children with special needs follows two other recent initiatives of the Athena Fund.

The first is an exciting, touching video featuring testimonials of parents to teens with special needs, describing how the iPad enables their children to express themselves in various subjects and communicate with them and their surroundings. The second was a charity auction of more than 50 artworks created by Israel's best artists, to benefit Israel's special education teachers. Each artist received an old laptop that is no longer in use (contributed by high-tech companies), and turned it into a unique 3D artwork.

In addition to iPad for Every Special Education Teacher in Israel, Athena runs three additional programs: Laptop Computer for Every Teacher, Laptop Computer for Every Kindergarten Teacher and Tablet for Every Science Teacher.

Attribution/Source(s):
This quality-reviewed publication was selected for publishing by the editors of Disabled World (DW) due to its significant relevance to the disability community. Originally authored by Athena Fund, and published on 2017/08/23 (Edit Update: 2023/10/01), the content may have been edited for style, clarity, or brevity. For further details or clarifications, Athena Fund can be contacted at athenafund.org. NOTE: Disabled World does not provide any warranties or endorsements related to this article.