Bea and I visited the Mathru School for the Blind today. Here’s a short video from before our visit. Please bear with the lack of video editing (didn’t have the right file extension to use Movie Maker) and the construction noise in the background!
Today’s visit was a productive one. We met with Ms. Muktha and had masala dosas for breakfast. It was so good and so filling! I had dosas the first time I visited Mathru in 2008 and Ms. Muktha remembered that it was my favorite 
. We were given a tour of Mathru and Ms. Muktha introduced us to the different classes. It was so great seeing the teachers and students again. I saw a lot of new faces as well as many familiar ones. Most of them remembered me too. And it was so wonderful to see the students growing up and making progress.
So much is the same at Mathru but it has also expanded. Mathru is primarily a residential school for the blind (standards 1 – 10) that provides free education and rehabilitation services to students in Bangalore and surrounding areas. Mathru has since created a multi-sensory disability center for students who have multiple disabilities. The center currently rehabilitates students who are deaf, deaf-mute and blind, and blind and autistic. It was really touching to meet the students and to hear how much they have improved. In addition, Mathru also sponsors visually impaired college students and provides them with free food, accommodation and materials.
After the tour, we went over the legal forms (authorization form, consent forms, and research use license agreement) needed for our study and interviewed Ms. Muktha. Tomorrow, we plan to explain the consent forms for our study to the teachers and obtain student test scores (before and after the Braille Writing Tutor was introduced).
In the meantime, I’ll leave you with some pictures from today:
On our way to Mathru
Mathru School for the Blind
Bea (right) and I (left) with Ms. Muktha (middle)
Mathru students on their way to the park
