11/11/11: a Good Day to Count Your Many Blessings

Count them one-by-one...


Today was Veteran's (#1) Day, so I enjoyed a fantastically free Friday (#2) and stayed in my PJs until 4:00 (#3) doing absolutely nothing work-related (#4).  (No, I'm not sharing photos of that, something that you can add to your blessings count.)

Nothing short of fantastic describes the fall foliage (#5). 

Glad that I took my camera (#6) on this brisk and cloudless day for a bike ride (#7) along the newly completed

and mapped Fall Line Trace (#8)

with the best biking buddy ever (#9), Cindy.

Wikis and Blogs as Schoolwide Tools

2010 Technology and Deaf Education Symposium
Wikis and Blogs as Schoolwide Tools (T10B)
Kathy Tarello, Rochester School for the Deaf

Available Symposium Resources: Slideshow, photo, verbatim caption

Take Aways:
I met Kathy after my own presentation when she came up front to ask a question about my project. We shared delightful lunches on Tuesday and Wednesday, talking about technology and deaf education. Meeting this multitalented dynamo was one of the highpoints of the symposium for me.

Kathy described how she, as the technology teacher at Rochester School for the Deaf, has implemented the use of wikis and blogs for classroom projects and discussions, as well as for sharing staff information, professional development, and resources. She gave an excellent description of wikis and blogs and how they are used in the public sector. Reference that in the verbatim caption of her presentation (pp. 2-4).

The highlight of her presentation were the demonstrations of classroom wiki and blog use.

2nd, 3rd, 4th grade students (all reading on a 3rd grade level) worked collaboratively to create wiki author studies on Patricia Polacco and Tomie dePaola. Kathy structured the wiki for the students by setting up categories and designated resources ahead of time. Students posted unique facts about their assigned authors, using initials to identify themselves.

1st and 2nd graders worked on an Internet penpal project with the Lexington School for the Deaf in New York City. Students used digital cameras to take photos. Kathy uploaded the photos which students then used to create video introductions of themselves within a PowerPoint presentation. Slideshows were uploaded to the wiki for sharing. I think that the videos were still photos and text, not live action with ASL. Either possibility would work.

Middle School Math students created a virtual Math term dictionary with ASL videos. The teacher reported that students who did not study before are using the student-produced videos to study and that math grades have improved as a direct result.

4th and 5th grade English/Language Arts students used a vlog (video Web log) for an ASL/academic English project. They posted their own video responses in ASL to a teacher posed ASL question that had been posted on the vlog earlier (It's important to have good behavior in the computer lab. But what does that mean? What does "good behavior" mean?). The students then translated the ASL to written English, creating “good behavior” posters to display in the computer lab. This project tidily addressed ASL, written academic English, persuasive writing, and the NETS standards. Students used the desktop computers, equipped with Webcams, in the computer lab to create, edit, and upload the videos. Kathy reported that they learned to do this in about 5 minutes!

Access more blog postings.of more symposium sessions (scroll to bottom of linked blog posting).

Visual Communication Tools Inside of Distance Learning

2010 Technology and Deaf Education Symposium

Use of Visual Communication Tools Inside of Distance Learning (T9B)

Aaron Kelstone,  Simon Ting, and Cathy Clark, RIT/NTID


Available Symposium Resources: Verbatim captions, photos.

Take Aways 

Combining two of my favorite topics, distance learning and deaf education, the presenters discussed implementation of a single, visual tool-enhanced distance learning course for students on two campuses:  RIT and Gallaudet. Kelstone addressed barriers to online instruction: time-intensive, expensive, complex, demanding technical expertise, isolating, and lacking face-to-face contact. RIT developed IdeaTools which helps course designers and instructors to address those barriers.

Kelstone proposed that by using an inexpensive Webcam and IdeaTools software, distance classrooms become highly interactive, collaborative, active learning spaces that are highly accessible to deaf students. IdeaTools is a platform, similar to BlackBoard, that was developed at NTID. It allows for sharing of all sorts of media: PowerPoint, PDFs, and, most importantly, video communication and white board use. Additionally, IdeaTools archives class sessions so that students may review them. Very nice.

The project reported here involved “classroom within a classroom” design. That is, two, face-to-face classrooms met on two campuses, but used Webcams and IdeaTools to collaborate synchronously. With that course format, students at Gallaudet used laptops during class to view the shared activities, but more sophisticated (and expensive) presentation screens were available at RIT, which demonstrates the flexibility of the system.

Kelstone observed that the students collaborated outside of class using iChat instead of similar capabilities within the courseware (IdeaTools). When asked why, they responded that iChat allowed for asynchronous video chat, but that IdeaTools required synchronous viewing.

Access more blog postings.of more symposium sessions (scroll to bottom of linked blog posting).

The Dong Nai Project

2010 Technology and Deaf Education Symposium
The Dong Nai Project: A Case Study in High Quality, Low Cost, Low Tech Deaf-Centered Bilingual Education

James Woodward, Dong Nai Provincial Teachers’ College


Available Symposium Resources: Summary, photos, verbatim captions.

Take Aways:

The presenters shared the Dong Nai Project, begun in 1999 as a “case study in high quality, low cost, and low tech deaf-centered bilingual” for “university education to deaf people through Sign Language research, analysis, teaching interpretation” in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. In addition to providing education for deaf people in Viet Nam, the project team aimed to demonstrate a successful program with few financial or human resources for other countries in Southeast Asia. The project represents the only opportunity for higher education for deaf people in Viet Nam.

Access more blog postings.of more symposium sessions (scroll to bottom of linked blog posting).

Signed Multimedia Storybooks -- Interactive Vocabulary Instruction

2010 Technology and Deaf Education Symposium
Signed Multmedia Storybooks -- Interactive Vocabulary Instruction (M3A)
Emily Whiteside, Muscogee County School District and Valdosta State University

Take Aways:
Available Symposium Resources: Paper, slideshow, handouts, photos, verbatim captions.

OK, so this was my presentation. My main take away was this: don't keep what you have learned through hard work to yourself. Others want to know, and in sharing what you know, you may just meet some very interesting people who will share what they know with you. 


Take aways for you: the symposium paper gives the most complete information about the research, while the slideshow probably gives a better feel for the multimedia storybooks that I developed for the study. Both are linked above.

This study investigated the influences of signed multimedia storybooks on the receptive vocabulary skills, attitudes, and experiences of elementary aged hard of hearing students. Five multimedia storybooks built in Microsoft PowerPoint introduced 25 vocabulary words to students. Signed multimedia storybooks are hyperlinked, digital learning environments with animated videos of published books, multimedia instructional activities and games, and live-action video sign language interpretation.


Fifteen students enrolled in the Hard of Hearing and Speech/Language programs at a small elementary school in a medium-sized Georgia city participated in the five-week intervention. Two pretest/posttest measures addressed vocabulary achievement. A Likert-style survey measured student attitudes, and a teacher journal documented student experiences. Students showed significant improvement on the two measures of receptive vocabulary skills.


Positive student experiences, including engagement, group interaction, communication, and media interaction, increased with student activity choice and use of game-like activities. Negative experiences increased with teacher choice of activity, length and linguistic complexity of videos, competition among group members, and with technical difficulties. Student attitudes to all multimedia, sign language, and vocabulary statements were positive.


Like to try your hand at producing your own multimedia storybook without all the bother of creating the structure? You are most welcomed to download my template at Slideshare, but please remember to attribute that portion of the work to me. Definitely a time-saver.

Access more blog postings.of more symposium sessions (scroll to bottom of linked blog posting).

Presentation and Access Technologies at NTID

2010 Technology and Deaf Education Symposium
Demonstration of the Presentation and Access Technologies in Classrooms, Conference Rooms and Labs at NTID (M2A)

Chas Johnstone, RIT/NTID
Web Resources Available: Slideshows, photos, verbatim captions

Take Aways:
Chas Johnstone, NTID at RIT’s Data Center Operations Systems Analyst, wowed his audience with uber-access and presentation technology available to faculty and students at NTID. The presentation technology available in the demonstration classroom included two LCD projectors, two motorized projection screens, a resident computer, connections for additional presenter laptop computers, a DVD/VHS player, CCTV used in conjunction with a document camera, special lighting, and numerous ceiling speakers. Access technology available to classrooms included FM sound field system, an FM group hearing assistance system, a document enlarger, and a smaller flat screen monitor.

Having worked at RIT for 33 years, Mr. Johnstone has witnessed first-hand the improvement in interactivity and visualization that technology has made possible in the classrooms at NTID. He demonstrated the various lighting patterns possible in the room – a dry topic, but important in a classroom of visual learners where the instructor can easily direct student attention to different areas in the room with spotlighting.

Many rooms have two LCD projectors that allow simultaneous presentation of two different visuals, such as a presentation slideshow and real time captioning. This arrangement would also allow an instructor to demonstrate comparisons in a side-by-side display. As a hearing audience member, I enjoyed reading the caption display adjacent to the slideshows. When I missed something that the speaker said or when I needed to jot down an item from a previous slide, I could usually read what I needed from the caption display.

To accommodate this challenge for a significant number of students at NTID have reduced fields of vision (Usher Syndrome), classrooms contain smaller flat screen monitors placed at eye-level in room front. In sessions when I sat up near the presenter, I found these displays very easy to read and helpful.

The FM sound field system for the demonstration classroom included 20 ceiling-mounted speakers. In addition to that system, each classroom is equipped with an FM group hearing assistance system. Each group system includes two transmitters – for transmitting to RIT-supplied receivers and to student-provided receivers. Group receivers are also available, which students either clip it to a belt or wear around their necks.

Mr. Johnstone addressed an audience question about the lost ability to view closed captioning with LCD projectors. He acknowledged this as a problem. “That's true, and the reason that we have it here for that very reason, is because we're projecting and there is not a decoder in the projector. So if we want to show a closed-captioned VHS tape, we have to put it through this decoder, and then it will open it up when we project it.” He suggested commercial decoders made by Link Technologies.

One item missing from our demonstration classroom was an Interactive White Board (IWB). Eight NTID classrooms presently have IWBs, with more being added.

NTID is a model higher education facility serving deaf students with state of the art technology. Mr. Johnstone is a good resource person for all things deaf access/presentation technology. While researching this posting, I came across a wonderful technology tip sheet for classroom teachers of deaf students that he compiled back in 1999. Much of the information is relevant today. Have a look.

Access more blog postings.of more symposium sessions (scroll to bottom of linked blog posting).

ASL-STEM Forum

2010 Technology and Deaf Education Symposium
ASL-STEM Forum (Session M1D)

Richard E. Ladner, University of Washington
Anna C. Cavender, University of Washington
Daniel S. Otero, University of Washington

Computer Science and Engineering

DUB Group, University of Washington

Seattle, WA 98195 USA

cavender, oterod, ladner@cs.washington.edu

Take Aways:
Available Symposium Resources: paper, photos, verbatim captions

Dr. Richard Ladner presented the promising, and to me most exciting, work he and his colleagues have done for the ASL-STEM Forum. The online forum, a video-enabled discussion group for American Sign Language Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math terms, aspires to be a "resource for finding community-accepted signs in technical fields." The forum had 300 signs at the time of the presentation. You may also be interested in the Facebook group page.

Premise: "Often deaf scientists, students, and professionals decide on signs to use on a local (regional) or temporal (the duration of a class or conference) basis. As a result, alternative signs for the same term are developed, and developed signs are lost. Lack of standardization has been recognized for some time and creates obstacles for collaboration and learning." (Cavendar, Otero, Bigham, Ladner, 2010).The Deaf community has embraced video technology for communication -- vlogs, video phones, video social networks (YouTube). Online communities provide a powerful venue for collaboration across time, space, and cultures.

This session resonated with me on several levels. First, I was relieved to see that the same barriers present on a micro level (between different classrooms within our school district, or even within our school) exist at a much more sophisticated level between research institutions. For our staff, this very frustrating situation occurs when an interpreter, teacher, or support person is not privy to vocabulary content prior to the time to interpret. The educator must then interpret lessons "on the fly" with signs unfamiliar to the interpreter. More often, no known sign exists. With advance notice of lesson and vocabulary content, the professional may have time to research low-incidence vocabulary, as well as to collaborate with other professionals to determine the most appropriate sign. Even then, however, the new sign most likely will not match the sign for the same word at a different school. Then, the deaf student must relearn the sign before being able to communicate about it. So, what I should have known, I didn't really know -- we are not alone in our school district with the lack visual language standardization.

I was also excited to see researchers who had identified a significant problem for Deaf students and professionals, and who were combining different types of technology to tackle the problem. Beyond relief and excitement, this session validated and expanded ideas that I have had about using Internet video capabilities for virtual collaboration. These guys did not sit on their ideas. They collaborated and are doing it, and I think IT is going to be big.

Access more blog postings.of more symposium sessions (scroll to bottom of linked blog posting).

Retrospective: 2010 Technology and Deaf Education Symposium

An International Symposium

Technology and Deaf Education
Exploring Instructional and Access Technologies
Sponsored by

National Technical Institute for the Deaf at Rochester Institute of Technology
The Nippon Foundation of Japan and PEN-International

June 21 - 23, 2010

http://www.rit.edu/ntid/vp/techsym/

For those blog readers interested in Deaf Education, I hate it for you if you missed the 2010 Technology and Deaf Education Symposium, because in every regard it was worthwhile. Couldn't make it? No worries! A virtual visit will fix you right up.

Go to the symposium archive pages to access media presentations, handouts, verbatim presentation captions, submitted papers, session photos, and a "Faces of the Symposium" slideshow. Be sure to watch at least one of the six video archived sessions, in an application which simultaneously displays the slideshow, video, and captioning -- much as you would have experienced it on campus. Oh, and read what I found most intriguing in my take away entries -- a series of blog postings that will serve as a repository for my reflections on the 16 sessions that I attended. For another review of the conference, see the June, 2010 SIG Access Newsletter (a publication of ACM's (Association of Computing Machinery) special interest group, SIG Access, or Teacher May's several blog entries.

I am grateful to Muscogee County School District, and especially to Dr. Susan Andrews, Peggy West, and Donna Hart, for sponsoring my attendance at the symposium.

Links to Retrospective Session Blog postings: 
(I appreciate your patience as I slowly add sessions.)

21st Century Classrooms - Mary Liles, Texas School for the Deaf
Audio Wiz - Jeff Bigham, University of Rochester
ASL-STEM Forum - Richard Ladner, University of Washington
Access and Presentation Technology at NTID, Chas Johnstone, RIT
Signed Multimedia Storybooks; Emily Whiteside, MCSD and Valdosta State University
The Dong Nai Project, James Woodward
Visual Communication Tools Inside Distance Learning, Aaron Kelstone, RIT
Wikis and Blogs as Schoolwide Tools, Kathy Tarello, Rochester School for the Deaf

Audio Wiz

2010 Technology and Deaf Education Symposium  
AudioWiz (Session M10B)

Mobile Retroactive Audio Transcription and Description for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Individuals

Jeffrey P Bigham, Assistant Professor, University of Rochester

Anna Cavender, University of Washington Symposium Resources available: Captioning; photo; session summary Take Aways Audio Wiz is an in-development tool that can be used in conjunction with a Smart phone to capture audio events (up to 60 seconds) for the purpose of obtaining a quick description of the event. The developers rely on Amazon's Mechanical Turk service (small fee) and a pool of recruited transcribers to describe audio events. Jeffrey demonstrated the application live with his cell phone and did receive a quick text response (less than 2 minutes) at a low cost (About 5 cents/question). The application would be useful for hard-of-hearing persons who knew that they had missed an audio event (such as a PA system announcement in an airport) and had no one available to interpret. The presenter described a similar application, Scribe4Me, developed by Georgia Tech researchers a few years ago. Technical challenges present at the time that Scribe4Me was developed are no longer barriers (3G and 4G wireless networks; less powerful devices). I was intrigued by the idea of using the in-place capabilities of a smart phone as a solution to a complex problem and am convinced that these devices will become ubiquitous replacements for personal computers within the next few years. While employing Mechanical Turk workers to transcribe audio events may seem a bit clunky, it did work and was, I thought, a low tech solution. No programming needed. Access more blog postings.of more symposium sessions (scroll to bottom of linked blog posting).

Creating 21st Century Classrooms, Students, and Teachers

2010 Technology and Deaf Education Symposium  
Creating 21st Century Classrooms, Students, and Teachers (Session M11C)
Mari Lyles
Technology Director,
Texas School for the Deaf
Symposium Resources Available: Photos, Captions, Media Handouts, Links

Take Aways
Mari Liles showed one of the Did You Know videos (4.0, I think) and talked about technological tools used at the Texas School for the Deaf.

"At Texas School for the Deaf we believe that technology engages students and makes learning more fun... it's what the kids are doing so we might as well find a way to use those tools to present the information that we want to share with our students." 

 She talked about how tools such as Web cams, document cameras, digital projectors, student response systems, and a variety of Web 2.0 tools augment constructivist educational approaches by allowing students to collaborate and direct their own learning. I've listed the specific tools and their functions below. Your task: think of classroom applications that will allow students to direct, construct, and collaborate in their own learning.

Voice Thread -- Create presentations to which viewers may add comments. Demo
Animoto -- Creates videos for you from your still pictures, video snippets, and music
*Big Huge Labs -- Create media - newspapers, magazine covers, calendars, etc.
Blabberize -- Create animated "talking heads" using your still photo and audio clips.
DocsPals -- Convert from/to a wide variety of file formats
Glogster -- Create multimedia posters which may include video, audio, photos, and text. Demo.
ImageChef -- Create posters with text documents
Issuu -- Create and publish slick documents with pizzazz. Free version contains ads. Demo
KickYouTube -- Download and convert format of YouTube videos
NewspaperGenerator -- Create newspaper clippings from your existing documents
PhotoPeach -- Create a slideshow with text, music, and a quizz - similar to photo story
Print What You Like -- Print only selections of Web pages that you want - very handy!
Spell With Flikr -- Should make words with photos of alphabetic letters on Flickr, but link provided doesn't go to app!
Wall Wisher -- Post discussions, photos, links, announcements to a group
Wordle -- Create a word cloud from existing text


I thought that the most intriguing technology use was that of video iPods for home/school vocabulary instruction, but I can't find the site for it. Still looking.

Access more blog postings.of more symposium sessions (scroll to bottom of linked blog posting).