PEN-International initiated a plan to investigate the establishment of a Bilingual-Bicultural Deaf Education High School Program in Manila, the Philippines. This high school program will be the first of its kind in the Philippines to equally value both signed and spoken language. Several meetings occurred throughout the year to set the groundwork for the project. In June 2009, three representatives from De La Salle-College of St. Benilde (DLS-CSB) visited PEN-International: Brother Victor Franco, FSC, President of DLS-CSB; Robert Tang, Vice President for Academics; and Theresa Christine de la Torre, Director of the Center for Access and Development. In August 2009, Nora Shannon, PEN-International Senior Project Associate, visited Manila to learn more about the Philippines' educational system for deaf students. Ms. Shannon visited existing secondary programs for deaf students and interviewed stakeholders, including current and former teachers and interpreters in secondary programs for the deaf, faculty of the School for Deaf Education and Applied Studies at DLS-CSB, and deaf students in secondary and tertiary programs. A significant component of the project is to investigate possibility of clear videoconferencing and texting through OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) XO Video Chat, supplying one laptop per child. However, the current OLPC-XO Video Chat activity is not currently designed for deaf users. A proposal was submitted to the RIT Lab for Technological Literacy (LTL) in December 2009 and accepted in January 2010 to build a new, more efficient product that meets the needs of deaf students. A proof-of-concept version will be demonstrated at the NTID Technology Symposium on 21-23 June 2010.
