By Dereck Carolan
The Midlands summer camp was held in July this year and was open to all children in the region. The camp was divided into computers, day trip and sports day.
A computer day was held in Portlaoise at the start of the week, where the emphasis was on the use of magnification software, such as Zoomtext being used with MS Word, MS Excel and the Internet. A second day was held in Athlone at the end of the week and focused on the use of a screen reader (Jaws) with the above applications.
The group visited Sea Life in Bray. Jordan, age 13, tells us about the trip below.
“I was excited about going to the aquarium in Bray and could not stop thinking about all the different fish I would see. I arrived at the NCBI centre at 9am and met up with Aileen from NCBI and all the other kids and parents were there too. A group of 15 set off on the adventure to the aquarium. When we arrived we met with Dawn, who guided us around the aquarium.
There were lots of sea animals such as baby sharks, sea horses, jellyfish, stingrays, crabs and a big octopus. We spent two hours in the aquarium. Dawn explained all about the stingrays, how some are more dangerous than others. My favourite fish was the baby shark.
On the way home we went to McDonalds. It was the best day ever and I learned a lot about fish. I cannot wait for next year when we will go on another exciting trip.”
Keisha aged 11 had the following report on what the group got up to at the sports day.
“In the morning we did soccer training with Nick Harrison and Oisin Jordan from the FAI. It was good fun and I scored lots of goals. The weather was lovely. There were 11 children there. We had a competition to see who could score the most goals but it was a draw.
After lunch we went rowing with Offaly Rowing Club. I was rowing the boat on my own and it was brilliant. I was a bit nervous getting into the boat but I was fine after a while. It felt like I was rowing for ages. I would like to do it again soon.”
The combination of fine weather and a very friendly and good humoured group made the camp an enjoyable week. A special thanks to Jordan and Keisha for filling us in on the summer camp.