Opportunities for Success with Switches by @SENICT #assistivetech #augcomm #spedchat

Many years ago my kindergarten teacher, Miss Pinder thrust a pencil into my tiny hands and asked me to draw a picture. From that first day in school, every one of my teachers since has encouraged me to use pencils, then pens to write and draw things at every opportunity. Why? Because Miss Pinder and the other teachers knew that if I learned how to use a pencil I would have a tool that I could use to share my ideas, thoughts, opinions and feelings with the wider world. Miss Pinder gave me a tool I could use to communicate. It has served me well.

Take a moment now to think about the students in your class who use switches. How do they share their ideas, thoughts, opinions and feelings? They use their switches in the same way that I used my pencil. The difference of course is that I got to use my pencil fifty times a day at school and at home. How often do our pupils get to use their switches?

For this group of students using a switch will be their only way to interact with their world, their only tool for communication, for sharing ideas, and for taking part. For some it will be their voice. Strange then how little time is spent practicing this important skill.

To become a proficient switch user takes practice and as parents, educators and therapists we need to engineer our day to provide as many meaningful opportunities to do this as we can… at school and at home.  Here are a few ideas and resources to help get you started.


Choosing a Switch

There are many different types of switch on the market and choosing the right one is important is our students are to make progress.  For most learners we need to consider three things.

1.  Size:  The size of the switch determines the target area.  You need to make sure that the switch is big enough for the student to reach and press with a degree of accuracy.  The students gross and fine motor skills will need to be considered.

2.  Color:  Choose a color that the student can see.  This is especially important is the student has some degree of visual impairment.  Remember too that a yellow switch on a yellow table can be difficult to see.  If you are using a switch on a tray or table make sure that the switch is a contrasting colour.

3.  Position:  We need to position the switch where the students can see and reach the switch without difficulty.  This is vitally important if we are using switches with students who have a condition which restricts their movement for example CP.  Remember that your student will be pressing the switch many times during the day, if it is hard work to press it or if it causes pain or discomfort, your student will simply give up.

For most of the students that we may work with choosing a switch will be relatively simple.  A large brightly colored switch placed on the tray or table in front of the learner where they can see and reach it with ease.  If your student has more complex needs and requires specialist switches and mounting systems you should consult a therapist or talk to your school district about having the child formally assessed by an AT professional.


Switch Progression Road Map

This booklet will help you assess and teach switch skills in a structured way.  It is available as a FREE download from the Inclusive Technology site after entering your name and email address.

Big Mack

One of the easiest ways to embed switch use in your teaching.  Record a message, sound or music to support anything you’re doing in your class.  To get you started, this Help Sheet from CENMAC has over 150 ideas on how single message voice output devices could be used

Using Switches at Home

There are lots of switch accessible games that you can play at home for free.  The difficulty is finding them takes time.  Save yourself hours by check out the Switch-Accessible Activities page on the Teaching All Students blog.  It’s one of the best on the internet.

TIP:  If you haven’t got a switch and switch interface at home, remember that almost all switch activities will work by pressing the spacebar.  Find a red marker pen and color the spacebar to make it easier to see.


Buying Software

If you have to buy software, choose something that will work at lots of different levels. Slideshow Maker from Inclusive TLC enables you to make switch activities using your own motivating sounds and images which will work from cause and effect level right through to scanning with two switches.

Miss Pinder made time to for me to practice my pencil skills every single day, she knew the importance of communication. Let’s ensure that our switch users are afforded the same opportunity.

-  Ian Bean (@SENICT)

Ian was a special education teacher for many years at Priory Woods School in the UK where he taught learners with a wide range of severe and complex needs including Autism. Ian is now Lead Consultant at SENICT Consultancy and Training, a company providing services to special education.  You can visit Ian's website at www.ianbean.co.uk.

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Assessing Reading Skills of Students with Special Needs @kmkenny89 #sped #spedchat

This is a guest post by Kaylyn Kenny (@kmkenny89). Kaylyn is a student at Illinois State University who is majoring in special education. I recently "met" Kaylyn on Twitter during this week's #spedchat, which was an open forum. You can view the transcript here. Kaylyn chimed right in asking, "learning about assessing students...any advice? I have to do a lot of assessing this semester." Her question generated several responses. I then asked if she would be interested in writing a guest post and she agreed.


Here at Illinois State University, as part of our courses on curriculum and instruction we have to assess and tutor students around the rural area. We first make an assessment toolkit. In the assessment toolkit, we need teacher materials, anecdotal notes, and data analysis forms.

One of the first assessments we use to assess to our students is the Burke Reading Interview, which helps us know what type of reader the student is along with how comfortable they are with reading. One of the main points of assessing is to make sure every student goes through the reading process while they are reading. First, they need to activate their schema. They can do that by sampling the text, anticipating or predicting, and monitoring their reading (Does it make sense? Does it sound right? Does it look right?). They can connect the sample to their own lives or background knowledge. Then they will either confirm or disconfirm what they have read. If they confirm, they will self correct right away. And if they disconfirm, they will search for the word or sentence then they will self correct or even skip the word.

We can also assess with the HT (hypothesis test) process. This is where teachers record and observe what the student does before, during and after a student is reading. Then we interpret why the student is doing the actions we observe and make an hypothesis with the observations and interpretations we have wrote down. The most important part is making a curricular decision for the student when we teach them. Reading is a complex process of solving and meaning.


- Kaylyn

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AT Awareness for Every Teacher: The Strategy-A-Day Calendar #SADcal by @ATTIPScast #assistivetech #ATpeeps #spedtech #spedchat

Here's a unique approach to professional development for assistive technology from Christopher Bugaj.  Many of you might already know Christopher as the voice behind A.T.TIPSCAST.

You've seen them in the mall or in bookstores or received one as a present over the holidays.  They come with kittens and puppies, hardy-har jokes, or deep meaningful quotations.  Yet they all have one thing in common... a new page every day. 

What am I talking about?  Tear-off desktop calendars of course! 

But what's that got to do with assistive technology?

In Virginia's Loudon County Public Schools (LCPS), the answer is everything.  Here our assistive technology team uses a daily tear-off calendar to provide professional development to teachers around the school district.  

Here's how it works:

During the first week back to school the special education teachers in our county find a "Strategy-A-Day" calendar in their mailboxes.  Each page of the calendar features a solitary technique, tip, best practice, or any other bit of knowledge that can be used to differentiate learning.  Veteran teachers expect the calendar because we've been putting one out since the 07-08 school year. 

Since the strategies can often benefit all students, our district also provides a digital version of the calendar on the district's internal website--for the benefit of all teachers. Some schools have even opted to take a digital version of the calendar and place it as their teacher desktop.  In this way, whenever any teacher logs in, that person sees the latest strategy displayed behind their icons.

Here's what we've learned:  

When a calendar is on a teacher's desktop, either digitally or in a printed format, it starts to become habitual to check for the latest strategy.  Before long teachers are tearing off pages or taking screenshots of the strategies they find useful in order to save or share with others. The process of making one also fuels collaboration and sharing. And once the first calendar is produced, it gets easier to reproduce in the future.

Sound like a good idea for your district?

All you need are people willing to contribute some content. Here's one way to pull it together:
 

• Use a cloud-based tool like Google Docs so any number of people can add content to one file.
  
  
• Contributors log into the Google Doc, pick a blank slide of the presentation, and add their content.
  
  
• Division of labor can be by topic, like strategies for teaching communication or writing, or free-form, where contributors create pages based on anything that gets them jazzed.
  
  
• Once everyone has added their content, one person can go back to the file and add dates to each page.
  
  
• Then print, cut, and glue the calendars together.  In LCPS, a class of graphic design students who are learning to use cutting and gluing equipment finalize the calendar.  In this way, the entire LCPS calendar is created in-house using district resources. 

Keep in mind, if you don't have enough time, people, or resources to make a daily calendar, a weekly calendar could be produced. It would have fewer strategies than a daily calendar, but it could also be more focused.  Imagine a "Communication Strategy-A-Week" or "Writing Resource-A-Week" calendar produced in successive years.  Calendars could be created to match targeted areas, providing a consistent reminder of school goals. 

Need content ideas?

Sadly, our calendar is not available beyond our district.  But, here are two ways to find our content:

1. On Twitter: do a search for the hashtag #SADcal.  People who contribute to the creation of the calendar often tweet out the strategy of the day and any related resources.
   
   
2. Check out our delicious account at http://delicious.com/lcpsat.  There, you'll find tags listed by date.  Click on the tag for the corresponding date and you'll be taken to a page of resources related to the topic that was presented in the calendar for that day.   

So, if you're looking for a way to promote AT awareness, spread UDL ideas, and cultivate collaboration, consider a Strategy-A-Day calendar.  It can be the healthy snack added to a steady diet of professional development.  And it might just hold the key strategy that makes all the difference for a student.   


Chris Bugaj is the author of The Practice (and fun) Guide toAssistive Technology in Public Schools, and produces the podcast, A.T.Tipscast: Assistive Technology in Public Schools; learn about them at the A.T.TIPSCAST blog site. Bugaj will also present at ATIA 2012 Orlando: "UDL 2.0 for 2012" (with Beth Poss) and "The A.T.TIPSCAST LIVE! The Power of Podcasting," both on Friday, January 29th.

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Learning About UDL by @CaileyRicher24 #edchat #tichat #spedchat #spedtech

Source:  UD4All wiki

This is a guest post by Cailey Richer (@CaileyRicher24).  Cailey is a student at Illinois State University.  She originally posted this on the Classroom 2.0: Help or Feedback Needed Forum.

Today, I attended a discussion in my SED 379 class. In the discussion we were supposed to talk about UDL. Here is what I said:

When I first learned about UDL freshman year of college in my SED 101 class, the first example of UDL that came to my mind was a ramp.  A ramp is a great way to provide a different way of access to individuals with disabilities.  But there is so much more to UDL.  UDL gives all individuals equal opportunities to learn.  It is not a single "one size fits all" solution. Because, realistically, one size never fits all.  Everyone learns in a completely different way from everyone else and this is especially for children with disabilities.

On the CAST website, it explains that UDL can assist teachers in creating instructional goals, methods, materials and assessments that work for every student.  There are 3 important concepts that UDL can provide.  According to the CAST website, UDL can help teachers present information and content in different ways (multiple means of reprsentation), differentiate the ways that students can express what they know (multiple ways of expression), and stimulate interest and motivation for learning (multiple means of engagement).  Besides the ones I listed, there are many more ways to provide multiple means of representation, expression, and engagement.

Source: CAST

UDL also plays a big part of being a 21st century learner.  Being in the 21st century, technology is important.  Since all students with disabilities learn differently and may need some source of technology to do so, this is where UDL and 21st century learning correlates.  Multiple means of expression could be showing a student a video on a projector in order for them to understand a concept.  Without UDL, learning efficiently would be almost impossible for students with disabilities.


READERS:  What is your opinion on UDL and in your past experiences how have you met the needs of all students?


-  Cailey

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Guest Post: Thinking outside of the box for Inclusion #edchat #spedchat #tck

Guest Post

This week we are excited to have a guest post by Sarah Rose.  Sarah is a special education inclusion teacher at Oak Park Elementary School in Illinois.  Her guest post this week is all about inclusive education.  We hope you enjoy the post and find the resources Sarah shares with us useful.

-  Jeremy and Patrick

Thinking outside of the box for Inclusion

When imagining what inclusion will look like for any one student you must take the same approach you would when developing his or her IEP. Think about the students individual needs, how you can make that happen in the general education setting, and how you can use any opportunity to promote the child’s independence while improving their social status. As anyone who is involved in inclusion knows, it is 50% about having the student academically involved and 50% about having him or her be socially involved. How sad would it be to only focus on one; having a student who shares with his friends, does great in groups and is the coolest kid in the class but hasn’t gained independence or learned new information. Vice versa, having a student who is learning all new things, gaining tons of knowledge, but the other students aren’t sure how to say hello, or have a million questions, or are to scared to invite their classmate over to play. Balancing these two aspects of inclusion takes a team of educators and parents who can think outside of the box and come up with new and creative ways to meet all of the social and academic needs of one student.

Below I have shared some of my favorite resources and examples of the many ways educators and families think outside of the box to promote inclusion and meet student’s individual needs.

Teaching Philosophies: Creating an inclusive culture

As Response to Intervention takes over our nation teachers are becoming “independent differentiators” and often have the best ideas, I get to spend more of my time asking “What do you think we should do?” instead of arguing why we must make accommodations and modifications and explaining why “it really is fair”. I get to spend more time working on helping develop an inclusive culture and less time creating tools and adapting materials, it is wonderful!

Great Resources for creating an inclusive culture

Paula Kluth

Inclusive Teaching Facebook group

Inclusive_Class Livebinder

Outside Consultants

We recently began using outside consultants to help create an inclusive culture, at first I was timid but they have become one of my favorite resources. They can say something in a new and interesting way that will motivate staff and parents, and help them team solve problems we thought we would never find solutions for, I have worked with the following and have really enjoyed their input.

Patrick Schwarz (Inclusion specialist), Chris Flint (Autism Specialist), Paula Kluth (Inclusion Specialist), and online Patrick Black and Jeremy Brown have been some of my favorite guys to go to for ideas!

UDL tools

Universal Design tools are great for helping teachers get started, discover where problems may be occurring, and help a team think outside of the box. These links have resources for accessibility and planning. 

CAST UDL Toolkits

UDL Tech Toolkit

Teaching Interaction skills: Bringing inclusion to all!

Best Buddies

Reverse Inclusion- Peer tutoring

-  Sarah Rose

holmesschoolrockstars.blogspot.com

Facebook page


Would you like to contribute a guest post to the Teaching All Students blog?  Please contact Patrick or Jeremy.

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Guest Post - Common Core State Standards and Special Education

The Common Core State Standards Initiative is an effort promoted by the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices and the Council of Chief State School Officers. The Initiative is intended to provide states, students, teachers, parents and school officials with clear markers and education standards students should be meeting during their K-12 careers. The supporting theory implies that by aligning primary and secondary educations, students will be better prepared to enter post-secondary institutions and workforce training programs.

The creation of these standards is undertaken by the states themselves, using their own processes for development, adoption and implementing. However, the Common Core State Standards Initiative is a state-led effort to create a set of standards that states can voluntary adopt. These standards are generally implemented in English language arts and mathematics. If states choose to use the Common Core State Standards, the measure will be voted on by the state's board of education or the state's legislature. So far, around 36 states and the district of Columbia have adopted common academic standards, but states critical of the measures believe it to be ruse for the federal government to control and impose their own national standards on states.

But what do these common academic standards mean for special education teachers and students? It appears that the effort is met with both concern and optimism. While some believe the standards impose reasonable goals for students with learning disorders or speech impairment, others believe the standards are unreasonable for those with cognitive impairments. In the Common Core State Standards, the writers noted that students covered by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, or IDEA, should have access to and receive, if possible, the same rigorous coursework general education students receive. Unfortunately, the text does not detail how that is to occur. There are concessions made, however, for accessibility issues, like acknowledging that "reading should allow for the use of Braille, screen-reader technology, and other assistive devices, while writing should include the use of a scribe, computer, or speech-to-text technology."

Currently, many special education advocates, officials, and teachers are busily attempting to discern how these common standards will be implemented into their programs and affect their disabled students. It seems that only time will tell whether those 36 states with already adopted common academic standards can rise to meet the needs of their special education students.



By-line:
This guest post is contributed by Olivia Coleman, who writes on the topics of online colleges and universities.  She welcomes your comments at her email Id: olivia.coleman33 @gmail.com.

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Guest Post - The Importance of Awareness and Advocacy in Special Education

The Texas Tribune very recently reported on a trend in Texas public schools--special education students are twice as likely to be suspended from school as their general education student counterparts. The article gives a personal account of one young kindergartner afflicted with brain damage who had been sent home by the school district five different times in one school year.

A Texas Education Agency study found that expulsions were also inordinately higher for special education students as compared to the general student population. While special ed students make up ten percent of the overall student population in public schools in Texas, they account for twenty one percent of expulsions. In terms of suspensions, out of every 100 special education students, there were over 50 in-school suspensions and 25 out of school suspensions. With regular students the numbers were significantly less--only 33.2 in school suspensions and 12.1 out of school suspensions for every 100.

This imbalance in disciplinary action between special and non special education students demonstrates the difficulties of teaching students who are afflicted with disabilities. It also demonstrates a need for teachers who are prepared to handle these special circumstances.

However, not all is doom and gloom, as the TEA noted that these statistics have improved over the years. What's more, several Texas public schools have adopted what's called "positive behavior supports", which employs behavioral approaches that are couched in positive affirmation. One school district which had received a grant for using this net of behavioral approaches experienced an almost 60 percent drop in disciplinary referrals.

Both parents and teachers who are involved in special education in some way must continue to advocate for change. The importance of awareness and advocacy of special education was recently demonstrated in an intensive seminar held by Behavioral Outreach Services, which would teach parents all the intricacies of special education laws and practices. Seminars such as these could be the start of greater awareness and could further fuel continued improvements in special ed.

Special education is no easy task, and leveraging the power of the Internet in order to become informed about laws regarding special education students, as well as current proposed policies, are instrumental in achieving any sort of change in which the interests of the special ed child comes first.

WrightsLaw is one such Net resource that helps keep teacher and parent advocates up to date on laws and policies.

This guest post is contributed by Lauren Bailey, who writes on the topics of online colleges. She welcomes your comments at her email Id: blauren99@gmail.com.


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Guest Post - So you have an idea for an app...

Today's post is guest post from the creator/developer of the iPhone app - iCommunicate (see my review here - #AppMondayTAS - iCommunicate).

- Patrick

So you have an idea for an iPhone app. But now how do you take this idea and get it developed and distributed to the people who you know need it?

Remember the idea is the most important part. You were inspired by something you saw around you at work everyday, or something that touched you personally, or you have the next big idea waiting to explode onto the market.

You really have two options if you want to get your app published.

One, go it alone, download the necessary SDK(Software Development Kit) for $99.00 for an individual and learn how to register with Apple. Setup your development environment. Play with samples and emulators in your free time. Then start developing your app and use Google search as your guide when you get stuck. This is a very difficult way to get it done, and it will probably take more than 6 months and you may be frustrated weekly. It took me two months to get up to speed on developing for the iPhone and I have a computer science degree and 12 years experience. If you want to get some developing skills you can take an Objective-C programming class or an intro to iPhone development class.

Or two, hire someone like me who has done all this before many times. Someone who knows how to register you properly, what questions to ask before the app even starts to get developed, what information and images you will need before you can even submit the finished app, give you a beta version of what you envisioned, so you can make late tweaks to the app, and who knows the ins and outs of submitting apps and getting them approved. A developer you hire should also know how to do updates and improvements quickly and efficiently. Depending on the app you can get a finished product in as little as a month for a somewhat simple app, to many months for more complex apps.

The key to getting any software done is to have requirements written down before you even meet or contact a developer. A basic idea of how you want the screens in your app to flow and look. You can even sketch out what the screens would look like. If the app is going to have lots of graphics or images, having these done beforehand can speed things up, as otherwise a developer needs to hire a graphic designer too, and wait for that work to be compete before the app can be finished. The more prepared and well thought out your idea is, the better chance a developer will take on your project. Remember you may need to sell your idea to the developer.

Good luck with your ideas and always feel free to contact us with any questions you have about the app development process.

Here are some links that offer more info:

• Apple - Developer Info
• How to Create Your First iPhone Application
• How to Hire a Great Developer

Lisa Brandolo Johnson, a physical therapist, and Jeffrey Johnson, a software engineer, are a married team with three children, who combined their skills along with their personal experience to found Grembe Apps. Grembe's mission is to create quality, versatile, affordable apps for parents and professionals who care for children with special needs. The use of the iPhone, iPod, and iPad has been a revolutionary new platform for assistive technology, and we look forward to expanding on what we've built and moving into other technologies and devices.

We are starting Grembe Apps Consulting, building apps that make a difference. Please email us if you have a project or idea that you want to bring to the iPhone, iPad, or Android OS. We know the excitement of turning an idea into reality and seeing how it grows. Let us bring your app to life.

Jeffrey Johnson, Developer Grembe Apps Inc.
http://grembe.com
grembe@comcast.net




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EdTech Blog Swap - Digital Citizenship - Guest Post

Today's post is part of the EdTech Blog Swap, sponsored by SimpleK12, my guest blogger is Elisha Reese. You can find my post at http://ereese.edublogs.org.

When I decided to start a career in education over a decade ago the term cyberbullying didn’t even exist. Bullying is nothing new to school or the youth culture. It’s something that we’ve all dealt with in our childhood past. However, the Internet has given birth to a new breed of bully, one that often has no traceable identity and one that can torment you 24/7. In my day you would leave school at the end of the day and could retreat home where you were safe. Now students leave school only to greet their tormentors online at home, leaving them no place in which they are truly safe from tormentors.

According to a survey done by the National Crime Prevention Center, over 40% of all teenagers with Internet access have reported being bullied online during the past year. What’s even more disturbing is that only 10% of those kids told their parents about the incident.

Cyberbullying is not limited to secondary age students. 58% of 4^th through 8^th graders admit to having mean or cruel things said to them online. 53% admitted to saying mean or cruel things. 42% of those studied believe that they have been bullied online but only 60% of those reported the incident to their parents.

This doesn’t even include the new trend of “sexting” in which students take lewd photos of themselves and send them via multimedia text messages to friends. In the same survey conduded by the National Crime Prevention Center, 10% of 770 students were made to feel “threatened, embarrassed or uncomfortable” by a photo take of them using a cell phone camera.

The recent death of Phoebe Prince, a young 15 year old that took her own life due to bullying, is a painful reminder to how crucial it is that we teach our students to be good digital citizens. Our students are growing up online. Most have access to a computer in their home with Internet access and many are texting their friends as young as seven years old. Most are interacting with digital media about every hour that they are not asleep, whether it’s texting, surfing the Internet, playing video games, etc.

Teaching good character is nothing new. We’ve been doing it for years through Character Counts lessons and similar methods. It’s time that we teach the same life lessons of morals, ethics and good character in the digital world. If you’re not teaching your students to be good digital citizens, why not? Here are some great resources to get you started!


Digital Citizen Teaching Resources

• Digital Citizenship - http://www.digitalcitizenship.net/
• Digital Citizenship Heartland Wiki - http://twaterman.pbworks.com/Digital_Citizenship
• A Beginners Guide to School Security - http://www.techlearning.com/showArticle.php?articleID=14700427
• Teaching Digital Citizenship Reflection - http://euclidnets.wikispaces.com/file/view/DCReflect.pdf

Elisha Reese has taught business and technology to secondary students for seven years. More recently she has stepped into the role of Instructional Technology Specialist at Frenship High School in Wolfforth, Texas. She loves discovering new ways to integrate technology into the classroom and loves discovering new technology tools to utilize with her teachers and students. You can follow Elisha’s blog at http://ereese.edublogs.org or follow her twitter @eliree.




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Captions for the Internet - Guest Post

The first part of today's post is from Jaime Berke. Jamie has been an About guide since 1997. Her job history includes managing a closed captioning website and before that, a deaf adoption news service. She was also active in the early "Caption Action" effort of the late 80s to early 90s to increase closed captioning on videotapes. Her resume also includes a four-year stint at the National Captioning Institute in the early 90s, plus she had also worked part time at the National Information Center on Deafness (now Info to Go) at Gallaudet University. Currently, she works at a day job in the "hearing world." By day she interacts with hearing people and attends meetings with the help of interpreters, and at night at home, with deaf people.


What educator would not want the benefits of a technology that costs school districts nothing, yet has huge educational potential? Right now, there is a bill in Congress that would do just that!


This bill is HR 3101, the 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act of 2009. It was introduced on June 26, 2009 by Representative Ed Markey (D-MA). The Act would update the Communications Act so that it would apply to the Internet. Internet technology has progressed by leaps and bounds, yet the law has not kept up.


HR 3101 is divided into two parts: A Communications part, and a Video part. The Communications part has to do, for example, with Internet-based telephone services, hearing aid compatibility for Internet-based phone services, and extends funding obligations for relay services to Internet-based phone service providers. It is the Video part that has much potential to benefit teachers!


The Video part of the 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act of 2009 would update the outdated law so that television programming broadcast on the Internet would have to be closed captioned. While there is currently some captioned programming on the Internet, it is still limited compared to the vast amount of Internet-based television programming. But that is not all! Current law only requires that television screens 13 inches or larger be capable of showing closed captions; the Act would update the law so that all video programming devices would have to be able to show closed captions.


Why is this so important to educators? The educational benefits of captions! Captioning has long since been proven to help children learning to read, and adults learning English as a second language. Parents know this, and more and more parents are making sure to turn on the captions when their young children are watching television. Teachers benefit from captions too, because when a child is watching a captioned program, they are getting print language exposure and vocabulary reinforcement.


Studies have been done that demonstrate the benefits of captions, as reported in Benefits of Captioning for Hearing Children and English as a Second Language Learners. In addition, the Described and Captioned Media Program sums up these educational benefits of captions on their Read Captions Across America web site. (Read Captions Across America is a partnership with the National Education Association).


So imagine the potential for a teacher in the classroom! With more and more schools relying on the Internet as a source of affordable (free) educational material, this bill is critically important to the future of the education of America's children! A teacher could have a class watch an assigned Internet video in the classroom on their computers, and then quiz the class on the caption vocabulary. A teacher could turn off the sound, forcing the students to learn from the video solely through print vocabulary alone.


Students going home on the school bus would be able to watch captioned video on their portable video devices, getting even more vocabulary reinforcement. At home, the student would get still more vocabulary exposure watching their favorite programs on the Internet. Recently, the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation reported that students are spending more than 7 hours a day using electronic media. HR 3101 could therefore literally triple the print vocabulary exposure of students!


Currently, HR 3101 has 30 cosponsors in Congress, listed below. If you are a teacher and you want HR 3101 passed in Congress, call or write your Representative! If you are on Facebook, you can also join Caption Action 2, a cause that supports HR 3101. In addition, HR 3101 is spearheaded by the Coalition of Organizations for Accessible Technology (COAT), http://www.coataccess.org. On the COAT website is a summary of the bill, and a list of affiliates. It costs organizations nothing to join COAT. Membership is free - but members must commit to working for the passage of HR 3101.




Jaime Berke

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Guest Post - Free Tech 4 Teachers

Richard Byrne of Free Technology 4 Teachers have given me an opportunity to guest post on his blog while he is on his annual ice fishing trip.  Free Tech 4 Teachers is a great blog with lots of great information about websites and ways to use technology.  So please check out Richard's Blog and check out my guest post - Web2.0 & Students with Disabilities!  Free Technology 4 Teachers


Patrick


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Read Across America - a new twist!

Today I'm bringing you a post from Thom Lohman. Thom Lohman is the Communication Services Specialist for the Described and Captioned Media Program and strongly believes in the educational benefits of captioning and description for all students. He is also an ardent supporter and practitioner of accessible, semantic, standards-based web design/development.


Patrick



The fifth-annual Read Captions Across America campaign (RCAA)—a partnership between the Described and Captioned Media Program (DCMP) and the NEA’s Read Across America—will be officially observed by thousands of students on Tuesday, March 2, 2010, the birthday of Dr. Seuss. Before you don your Cat in the Hat stovepipe hat, however, it helps reflect on why one of the most common forms of accessible technology is so beneficial to literacy.

Let’s start with a straw poll of sorts: How many of you have casually picked up a DVD case, intending to pop in a video for your class (after carefully vetting and previewing the content, of course), noticed the little “CC” or “SDH” notification on the back, and thought nothing of it? If you’re now reading this post with a virtual hand in the air, you’re likely one of many who are one step away from transforming a common educational tool (classroom video) into a multi-sensory literacy-building extravaganza.

Forgiving the bravado reflected in the last sentence for a moment, it’s imperative that everyone understand what the “CC” (closed captions) and “SDH” (subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing) represent. Both terms are common industry jargon for what we at the DCMP simply refer to as “captions.”


What Are Captions?
Almost everyone, at one point or another, has seen closed captions on television, but there is a great deal of information packed into those streams of white letters on black backgrounds that is easy to miss at first glance. Captions consist of the textual equivalent of a program’s spoken dialogue or narration and also include speaker identification, sound effects, and music description. Whether they are open or closed, Line 21 (or the newer digital 708 specification), SDH, or one of the many web formats, captions are available on a growing number of educational media products.

Obviously, the primary function of captioning is as a means of accessibility for people who are deaf or hard of hearing. The concept of captioning as accessibility is one of the pillars (along with description for people who are blind or visually impaired) of our Equal Access in the Classroom video, which I recommend everyone watch and share with a colleague or friend in the field of education.


Captioning: A Useful Literacy Tool
To quickly dispel a common misconception, captioning is not “just for people who are deaf.” Students of all ages and learning abilities, people learning English as a second language, and just about everyone else can benefit from the use of quality captioned media whenever it is available, including those areas outside of formal educational environments. Is it such an audacious idea that viewers of video-based media (especially kids, who spend much more time with their eyes focused on some sort of electronic display than they do with their noses buried in books) might benefit from some textual reinforcement?

Think about it: a common thread throughout seemingly all of the video-based literacy tutoring programs (and, to wit, programs intended to teach ESL) available on the market is the concept that emergent and developing readers—especially young children—benefit from simultaneous presentation of language in text and auditory form. Captioning takes this concept and seemingly one-ups it by including transcribed sound cues—including onomatopoeia—within the stream of text, allowing learners to develop phonetic awareness and reinforce the relationship between what is heard and what is represented in text.

If you’re interested in reading more about captioning use and its contribution to literacy, the DCMP provides a collection of compelling research summaries, case studies, and journal articles about many facets of accessible media. Visit the DCMP Clearinghouse and select “Research and Studies” under the “Captioning: General” heading for a complete listing of applicable resources.


(More Than) A Few Words About Accessing Captions Without an “Easy Button”
Now for the inevitable hitch in the system—certain classroom media setups make accessing closed captions an exercise akin to jumping through hoops. This is why the DCMP offers open captions on virtually every title in our collection. When captions are “opened up” (or, as some say, “burned in”), they become an integral part of the video signal that is transmitted from a source component (DVD player, computer, etc.) to a display component (TV, monitor, etc.)—these captions are “always on” and cannot be turned off.

Subtitles (including SDH) on DVDs/Blu-ray discs can generally be turned on via a menu option (likely headed “Captions/Subtitles,” “Languages,” “Set Up,” or something similar) or,on many discs,by pressing the “subtitles” button on the player’s remote control or software interface. Note that pressing a “CC” or “captions” button on the TV’s remote control will not activate disc-based subtitles, something that adds to many a teacher’s confusion when trying to access captioned content.

Other types of closed captions are, by definition, off by default, closed into some closet of external data until you, the user, open the proverbial door to allow them to be displayed. Theoretically, all televisions built since 1993 are required to provide for the display of closed captions. However, if your content is coming from anything other than a TV tuner (i.e., if you’re receiving your programming through a set-top box, DVD/VHS/Blu-ray player, DVR, or other component), or if you are watching the content on anything other than a TV (i.e. if you are using an LCD projector to project on a screen or interactive whiteboard), you might hit a few snags.

For starters, many displays enable closed-caption decoding only on inputs that connect to the TV’s tuner (usually a coaxial connection labeled “cable,” “TV,” “RF,” or “antenna”). That means if you’re connecting your player via a component cable (typically labeled Y, Pb, and Pr, and using a cable with green, blue, and red ends) or S-Video (a round connector with a square black pin and four small, round pins), you’ll need to be sure that your television supports closed caption decoding for these inputs.

Digital captions are another matter completely. Unlike Line-21 captions, which were included in the picture signal, digital captions must be opened up by the player. If you plan to show high-definition (or even enhanced standard-definition transmitted digitally) programming in your classroom, you’ll need to make sure the player you’re using enables the closed captions on your media to be decoded and burned into the picture before it makes its way to your display. If the combination of players and displays you are using does not decode closed captions, you can purchase an external closed-caption decoder (but many of these don’t support high-definition video output).

A quick word about web video: Although a great deal (certainly more than just a year or two ago) of web content is finally being captioned, there is no one universal standard (in the sense that television has a standard) format or player interface for displaying closed captions. It’s best to fully research a content distributor’s accessibility options to ensure captions are available (and of sufficient quality) before committing to use of that material.


Now It’s Time for That Hat
By launching RCAA in 2006 as a partnership effort with the NEA’s Read Across America, the DCMP hoped to expand peoples’—primarily educators’ and parents’—perceptions of “reading” to include the viewing of captioned media.

Now in its fifth year, RCAA has spread beyond the schools for the deaf and into public libraries, public schools, homes, churches, and other venues where conscientious educators (whether by profession or on a de facto basis) understand the need to utilize every available tool to ensure that literacy remains a top priority.

We invite you to participate by planning an RCAA event for your school or organization, especially if you’re planning to celebrate Read Across America already. We’ve put together a convenient, free all-in-one RCAA Event Kit containing posters, bookmarks, certificates, and—for registered DCMP members (see below for membership requirements)—a DVD containing six popular Dr. Seuss titles (with open captions, of course).


About the DCMP
Among its many accessible media-focused services, the DCMP provides free-loan access to thousands of quality captioned and described educational media titles to teachers, parents, and others involved in some educational capacity with K-12 students who are deaf, hard of hearing, blind, visually impaired, or deaf-blind. If our services would benefit the students you serve, please register today for a free account.

Even if you don’t qualify for a lending account, you may access our informational resources or subscribe to our newsletter for up-to-date DCMP news. Don’t forget to become a fan of the DCMP on Facebook, follow the DCMP on Twitter, and subscribe to the DCMP YouTube channel. The DCMP is funded by the U.S. Department of Education and administered by the National Association of the Deaf.




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