Lift Off

Hi all ~ A few of the doctoral students at the University of Nothern Colorado (UNC) had the opportunity to attend the first Colorado Consortium of Special Education Teacher Educators (CCSETE) Fall Institute 2005. The event provided a series of concurrent sessions in which several Institutions of Higher Education (IHEs) shared their latest initiatives, programs, and research. I attended the following sessions: Meeting the Challenges of the Accountibility System Teacher Preparation in Linguistically Diverse Special Education by John Hoover of the University of Colorado at Boulder. If this is an area of interest, I highly recommend you contact Dr. Hoover for more information. His email is John.Hoover@Colorado.edu or you can visit http://www.colorado.edu/education/BUENO UCCS Program Initiatives and Future Directions by Randall DePry, Julie Armentrout, and Laura Marshall of the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs. UCCS has a very exciting initiative called Breaktime Respite for parents of children of disabilities. Replication of this program would be wonderful throughout the state of Colorado. Let me know if you are interested in more information. and finally, drumroll please Teaching Outside the Box: Creating Learning Experiences that Transcend the Classroom by Kay Alicyn Ferrell, PhD, Nathan O. Lowell, PhD, Ann Sebald, EdD. from the National Center on Low-Incidence Disabilities. Audio from this presentation is available. My notes from Nates session might not make any sense without visiting the following link: http://nclid.unco.edu/Presentations/ferrell/ccsete/ A classroom serves an institution rather than intended to serve the student. All education involves some distance. Spoken language is technology. With spokent language, it becomes a question of degree “how far away are you?” We should not only concern ourselves with the technology, but also with the choices we use to select the technology. Distance occurs as soon as you involve “an other”. Blackboard is really fast mail. New tools requires new techniques. A classroom is a box. We must start thinking outside of the box. How to use online strategies: 1) Immersion = intense involvement. Phaedrus is an example of immersion. 2) Case studies starts by giving students a basic core of information. There is a high degree of content-based information absorbed by the students. A case is then developed and the learners begin to apply thier knew knowlege and utilize their gathered resources to address the case. 3) Simulation is based on a case in which the students help influence the outcome. The instructor follows the students lead. An example is a course being offered by Paula Conroy (UNC) on Assessment. The learners develop questions about the case and then locate tools to assist them to answer the questions and possibly generate new questions to be addressed. 4) Soap Opera involves a story. An example of this is available in the Deaf Specialist coursework (UNC) called Joey’s journey. The instructor provides links to questions that the characters generate 5) Seminar - example in the BVI methods course (UNC) The instructor provides information to the students, the student responds according to readings, assignments, questions. Things to consider: 1) Graphics are problematic. It is an issues of access. Graphics need to be described. Incidental graphics provide distraction. Graphics are important, but they must be laid out in a way that can be described by a screen reader in an orderly fashion that makes sense to the recipient. It is challenging to design pages that both look & sound good. 2) Audio and Video. We must accomodate the learner by using small downloads. When you encode audio you exclude participants. Audio is really slow. 3) Time management…teaching online classes takes additional time. The length of time will decrease as your skills increase. 4) Assessment of the learners abilities in the course can be soooo authentic and soooo valid that the student cannot even fake it. 5) Basic toolbox. It is about building and structuring the learning. Change creates anxiety. It is not the way people are accustomed to being taught.