• DillyDaily@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    Accessibility.

    We will never get rid of the analogue clocks from our school, we’re an adult education and alternative model highschool qualifications centre.

    We primarily teach adults with no to low English, adults and teens with disabilities, and adults and teens refered via corrections services.

    There is a significant level of illiteracy within numeracy, and for some of our students, it’s not a failing of the education system, it’s just a fact of life given their specific circumstances (eg, acquired brain injuries are common among our students)

    Some students can learn to tell time on an analogue clock even if they didn’t know before.

    But even my students who will never in their life be able to fully and independently remember and recall their numbers can tell the time with an analogue clock.

    I tell my students “we will take lunch at 12pm, so if you look at the clock and the arms look like this /imitates a clock/ we will go to lunch”

    And now I avoid 40 questions of “when’s lunch?” because you don’t need to tell time to see time with an analogue clock, they can physically watch the hands move, getting closer to the shape they recognise as lunch time.

    And my other students can just read the time, from the clock, and not feel infantalised by having a disability friendly task clock like they’ve done at other centres I work at - they’ve had a digital clock for students who can tell time, and a task clock as the accessible clock. But a well designed face on an analogue clock can do both.

    I myself have time blindness due to a neurological/CRD issue, so analogue clocks, and analogue timers are an accessibility tool for me as well, as the teacher.