Mobile Education and Access for Students with Disabilities Webcast

The National Cen­ter on Dis­abil­ity and Access to Edu­ca­tion is host­ing a free audio Web­cast titled Mobile Edu­ca­tion and Access for Stu­dents with Dis­abil­i­ties on Wednes­day, April 26th at 1pm Moun­tain Time (3:00PM East­ern). A descrip­tion of the Web­cast from the NCDAE website:

As tech­nolo­gies become smaller, sleeker and eas­ier to carry can they be devel­oped and used so that no child is left behind? That is the ques­tion we will address dur­ing NCDAE’s April 26, 2006 web­cast enti­tled, “Mobile Edu­ca­tion and Access for Stu­dents with Dis­abil­i­ties.” Join us at 1 PM Moun­tain Time (3 PM EDT) for a dis­cus­sion of tech­nolo­gies, prac­tices and stan­dards related to this increas­ingly pop­u­lar edu­ca­tion deliv­ery method.

The dis­cus­sion will be mod­er­ated by Marty Blair and will include a panel of John Peifer, Ed Price and Paul Baker. Reg­is­tra­tion is not nec­es­sary. If you miss the Web­cast then check back later at their page of archived Web­casts where you can access pre­vi­ous Web­casts such as:

• Stu­dent Infor­ma­tion Sys­tems and Indi­vid­u­als with Dis­abil­i­ties,
• Acces­si­ble Dis­tance Edu­ca­tion Tech­nolo­gies and Tech­niques and
• Acces­si­ble Edu­ca­tion Pol­icy: Points of Pos­si­ble Influ­ence.

If you haven’t vis­ited the National Cen­ter on Dis­abil­ity & Access to Edu­ca­tion web­site it is a great resource, with sec­tions on Tools and Tech­nol­ogy, Com­mu­nity and Part­ners and News and Activities.

Email eLearning– Using Email as a Course Management System

For dis­tance edu­ca­tion, online course mange­ment sys­tems are often appro­pri­ately used to facil­i­tate dis­cus­sions and other activ­i­ties asso­ci­ated with the instruc­tional process. Course man­age­ment sys­tems are also often used to add an online com­po­nent to face-to-face instruc­tional expe­ri­ences. Some of the oft-used fea­tures in this type of a blended/hybrid learn­ing set­ting include dis­cus­sion board, file sharing/storage and the send­ing out of announcements.

Often, a sim­ple email dis­cus­sion list could just as well pro­vide at least the same func­tion­al­ity of the fea­tures men­tioned above with­out requir­ing the learner to become famil­iar with a new a course man­age­ment sys­tem. Here are some ideas on how to take full advan­tage of an exist­ing tech­nol­ogy (email) that every­one is famil­iar with to encour­age learn­ing, espe­cially blended learn­ing sit­u­a­tions. The term dis­cus­sion list is being used with the same mean­ing as a listserv.

1. Announce­ments This one is obvi­ous, if an instruc­tor needs to let stu­dents know about some­thing he or she sim­ply send out an email to the list­serv and it auto­mat­i­cally goes to everyone’s inbox. (Hope­fully there isn’t any­one out there using a CMS sim­ply for the pur­pose of emails other students).
2. Dis­cus­sions This seems to be a com­mon fea­ture for instruc­tors who desire to add an online com­po­nent to their face-to-face teach­ing sit­u­a­tion. Using a CMS you log in, browse to the dis­cus­sion sec­tion, find what­ever thread you are look­ing for and then read and post. Using a list­serv the dis­cus­sion arrives in your inbox and you click reply when you want to respond to a dis­cus­sion thread– easy. Small group dis­cus­sions would also be pos­si­ble although it would require a sec­ond dis­cus­sion list to be set up.
3. File stor­age and shar­ing As long as the nature of an assign­ment allows it to be shared by the group then it can be sent as an attach­ment where oth­ers in the group can read and com­ment (and grade) and the attach­ment is then auto­mat­i­cally archived. Dis­cus­sion list archives can be pub­lic or private.

Another advan­tage of using a dis­cus­sion list where pos­si­ble is that under­stand­ing and being able to use such lists effec­tively is a great way to pro­mote future pro­fes­sional devel­op­ment in rel­e­vant dis­cus­sion lists.

More Read­ing…

Syl­labus of an entire course on Using Email in Instruc­tion
Email games from Thiagi.com

Accessible Multimedia — Skills for Access

Skills for Access bills itself as The Com­pre­hen­sive Guide to Cre­at­ing Acces­si­ble Mul­ti­me­dia for e-learning. I haven’t had time to go all the way through the site, but it looks like it deliv­ers with a lot of sub­stan­tive con­tent, com­plete with great case stud­ies as well as in-depth instruc­tions on how to cre­ate acces­si­ble mul­ti­me­dia using a vari­ety of tech­nolo­gies. (via splin­tered)

.

Online Portfolios

I’m not yet super informed on elec­tronic port­fo­lios, but I had a few thoughts that I wanted to throw out and hope­fully get some feed­back. If you’re at all new to port­fo­lios you may be ask­ing your­self, “So how exactly is an online port­fo­lio dif­fer­ent from a reg­u­lar old web­site?” My impres­sion is that in some ways they are not dif­fer­ent at all– but there are (or at least can be) some key dif­fer­ences. A good primer is this arti­cle titled The Elec­tronic Port­fo­lio Boom: What’s it All About?

Briefly, my under­stand­ing is that a web­site is gen­er­ally more flex­i­ble and gives the port­fo­lio devel­oper more con­trol over lay­out (not always a good thing in the hands of an ama­teur). Online port­fo­lios gen­er­ally have a set frame­work for con­tent, occa­sion­ally a cou­ple of tem­plates to choose from and some even allow stu­dents to cor­re­late work they’ve done with a set of learn­ing standards.

One way of set­ting up an online port­fo­lio that has been dis­cussed is to use an open source blog or other CMS piece of soft­ware. Here is an exam­ple of a ePort­fo­lio about port­fo­lios done using Word­Press, a great arti­cle from Stopde­sign and some inter­est­ing thoughts from the ERADC, ePort­fo­lios and weblogs: one vision for ePort­fo­lio devel­op­ment.

As far as using a spe­cific port­fo­lio soft­ware, I’d love to hear what options peo­ple know of. One to check out is the Open Source Port­fo­lio Ini­tia­tive a well devel­oped effort of a lot of uni­ver­si­ties that seems to be fairly full featured.

All of those resources noted, I think there are big ques­tions to con­sider about sus­tain­abil­ity and effec­tive­ness of port­fo­lios for any group before too much time is invested in devel­op­ing any kind of com­pre­hen­sive long-term system.

WebCT Accessibility Learning Module

A learn­ing mod­ule titled WebCT, Acces­si­bil­ity, Usabil­ity and the Dis­abled Stu­dent from Ever­green Val­ley Col­lege. Com­pre­hen­sive overview of bar­ri­ers, solu­tions and alter­na­tives avail­able to ensure your con­tent is acces­si­ble. Great resource. (via Teach­ing and Devel­op­ing Online)

Accessible Online Math Resources

I pro­fess in no way to be an expert on the topic, but recently pro­vided these resources to some­one and thought I would pass them on:

As far as I can tell, one of the most excit­ing ini­tia­tives in this area is the
NIDE MathML project avail­able at the MathML Acces­si­bil­ity Project Page or the W3C Math Homepage

The Pro­gram Access Project is geared toward engi­neer­ing and sci­ence, but the Prin­ci­pal Inves­ti­ga­tor is a Math pro­fes­sor, so it may take a math­e­mat­i­cal slant.

Norm Coombs, noted acces­si­bil­ity expert has also done some work in
this area as well. He is involved with a
Reach­ing New Audi­ences with New Media: Open­ing the Door to Sci­ence and Math­e­mat­ics Project and has a list of resources on the topic.

This Math­e­mat­ics Acces­si­ble to Visu­ally Impaired Stu­dents project has fin­ished, but they still have some good resources listed at
their site. They have a page with cur­rent con­tact infor­ma­tion That links to to their old main page

Lastly, the Regional Alliance for Sci­ence, Engi­neer­ing, and Math­e­mat­ics — Squared has a num­ber of great resources as well– Enjoy!

Distance Education Resources

I have devel­oped a few dis­tance edu­ca­tion resources for staff at the Insti­tute for Com­mu­nity Inclu­sion and thought that some of you might find them use­ful. Enjoy and please let me know if you have any feed­back. The resources include an overview of dis­tance edu­ca­tion, under­stand­ing list­servs as well as some exam­ples of streamed, cap­tioned videos.

In addi­tion, I am cur­rently eval­u­at­ing three course man­age­ment sys­tems– Moo­dle, ATu­tor and Prometheus (now owned by Black­board). I have setup a sam­ple course in each of the three sys­tems, if any­one is inter­ested in look­ing at the courses, let me know . I would also love to hear about the expe­ri­ences that any of you have had work­ing with any of these systems.

Access E-Learning (Free Training!)

Access E-Learning

From the site:

Access E-Learning (AEL) is a ten-module tuto­r­ial that is a resource for those seek­ing to make their dis­tance edu­ca­tion acces­si­ble for indi­vid­u­als with dis­abil­i­ties. AEL offers infor­ma­tion on the most com­mon needs in dis­tance edu­ca­tion, and pro­vides instruc­tion in tech­niques that will enhance the usabil­ity of online mate­ri­als for all students.

The tuto­ri­als are being pro­vided as a ser­vice of the Geor­gia Tech Research on Acces­si­ble Dis­tance Edu­ca­tion project (GRADE). The ten mod­ules go over Dis­abil­i­ties, Acces­si­bil­ity Plan­ning, Pow­er­point, Video, Flash, Word, Excel, PDF, HTML and Scripts/Java. Many of the mod­ules even have a lab along with the nec­es­sary files (Win­dows or Mac) that you can down­load to prac­tice what you are learning.

Per­haps even more excit­ing are some of the future activ­i­ties that Project GRADE has planned, includ­ing the devel­op­ment of dis­tance edu­ca­tion acces­si­bil­ity stan­dards and a national lead­er­ship insti­tute on acces­si­bil­ity in dis­tance edu­ca­tion. I’ll be watch­ing this project closely and keep­ing you updated on what they are up to.

Making Online Teaching and Learning Accessible Satellite Event

I’m back among the liv­ing and came across what looks to be an excit­ing event on the Dis­abled Stu­dent Ser­vices in Higher Edu­ca­tion List­serv yes­ter­day. Work­ing with the PBS Adult Learn­ing Ser­vice, the Uni­ver­sity of Mary­land Uni­ver­sity Col­lege is pro­duc­ing a live tele­cast titled:

Untan­gling the Web: Mak­ing Online Teach­ing and Learn­ing Accessible

From the descrip­tion, the areas that the tele­cast plans to cover are:

• How stu­dents with dis­abil­i­ties are nav­i­gat­ing the Web, and how
  inac­ces­si­ble course con­tent impacts the work of fac­ulty and staff
• How to address acces­si­bil­ity prob­lems posed by course­ware, course
  man­age­ment sys­tems, mul­ti­me­dia, and use of audio and video in online
  courses
• What kind of col­lab­o­ra­tive mod­els have been devel­oped to help fac­ulty
  and staff meet the chal­lenge of online accessibility
• How to develop insti­tu­tional coor­di­na­tion poli­cies in your cam­pus or
  organization
• What fac­ulty and staff devel­op­ment pro­grams can do to enhance
  under­stand­ing of dis­abil­ity and technology
• What role good teach­ing plays in improv­ing online accessibility
• How Uni­ver­sal Design and Uni­ver­sal Design for Instruc­tion can inform
  the process of ensur­ing online accessibility

It is still 3 months away, but looks to be an excit­ing event.

On another note, I have recruited Jeff Coburn to share with us some of his acces­si­bil­ity wis­dom on Curb Cut Learn­ing. Jeff is our web spe­cial­ist at the Insti­tute for Com­mu­nity Inclu­sion and he is the guy I go to when I’m stumped with an acces­si­bil­ity ques­tion or am try­ing to fig­ure out a new tech­nol­ogy. Wel­come Jeff.

Accessible Web-based Distance Education: Principles and Best Practices Article

Acces­si­ble Web-based Dis­tance Edu­ca­tion: Prin­ci­ples and Best Practices

I really like this arti­cle from Lau­rie Har­ri­son at the Unver­sity of Toronto because of the empha­sis on Uni­ver­sal Design Prin­ci­ples. While it is a bit dated (it looks like all of the ref­er­ences were pulled in July of 1999), the ideas expressed are solid and pro­vide a good basic overview for some­one new to the ideas of uni­ver­sally designed dis­tance education.

The idea of uni­ver­sal design is vital in pro­mot­ing the develp­ment of acces­si­ble dis­tance edu­ca­tion resources. Unfor­tu­nately, too many devel­op­ers still igno­rantly lump all types of users with dis­abil­i­ties together and then dis­miss their con­tent as being irrel­e­vant to “that pop­u­la­tion.” Idiots. When peo­ple real­ize that stan­dards based markup that sep­a­rates con­tent from pre­sen­ta­tion in acces­si­ble ways ben­e­fits EVERYONE then maybe we’ll see wide­spread change hap­pen­ing. The good news is that it is already hap­pen­ing to some degree and we’ll only see more of it in the next few years.

On a side­note, I’m get­ting my ton­sils out in a cou­ple of hours, so it may be a week or two before I post again. I’ll have plenty of time to think while recov­er­ing (and I’ll be on some pretty heavy painkillers), so maybe I’ll have some inter­est­ing thoughts to share when I come back.