Following reviews from others working in accessibility, inclusion and Higher Education, I’ve been watching footage from the recent Handheld Learning Conference in London. Extensive online proceedings including video are available on the conference website and via iTunes.
I’ve supplied links to videos alongside notes on the first 5 presentations from the Inclusion Session below. Notes from Sal Cooke’s presentation are most complete due to the range of sources she draws on and my own interest in the projects she cites. For brevity, this a descriptive account, not an analytic one. As I did not attend the conference myself, comments are very welcome. Please note all links open in a new window and many presentations feature slides that are not audio-described.
Inclusion Session Introduction: Donald Clark (video, predominately audio) 8 mins.
I recommend a listen to Clark’s introduction, which he also outlines in his blog article ‘Handheld Learning: Malcolm Maclaren et al.’ Clark poses provocative questions to delegates:
- To what problem is ‘inclusion’ an answer? Doesn’t everyone have a mobile?
- Is ‘Digital Divide’ an outmoded term? It’s no longer a poor/rich divide, but a series of fractures.
Specifically, here Clark identifies a disjuncture in the UK between ‘analogue’ educational practices in schools and the ‘digital’ world that characterises nearly everything else.
- Can inclusion actually result in exclusion? The fact that the few don’t have the technology means the many don’t get anything.
In terms of accessibility discourse, I feel this relates to the observations made by Brian Kelly and others regarding the development of Adaptable and Accessible practices. Video and other media from Brian’s presentation at TechShare are available via his blog.
- Has the ‘Digital Britain’ report helped or hindered our digital future? It’s largely about TV, Radio and Newspapers or punishing file-sharers.
Clark also questions policy approaches, making a strong critique of Digital Britain, identifying how a scoping document has become a punitive exercise.
Speaker 1: Niel McLean: ‘Inclusion: The Home Access Story’ (video) 20 minute talk and 5 minutes of questions. Note: This presentation opens with brief use of Russian in an illustrative point at the start of the talk.
Niel McLean presents in front of a slide on the Beveridge Report of 1942
Niel McLean is Executive Director of Becta (the British Education and Communications Technology Agency), here he introduces the Home Access project which seeks to ensure that all pupils in state education in England have the opportunity access to computers and internet connectivity for education at home. The programme supplies funding to achieve this. Aside from McLean’s discussion of socio-economic deprivation as a distinct category within the inclusion agenda, this talk includes a valuable dissection of the political grounds for Government’s role in ensuring home-based access to education.
Speaker 2: David Cavallo on One Laptop Per Child (video) 35 minutes.
David Cavallo presents infront of an image of five boys with laptops in an African classroom
David Cavello is the Chief Learning Architect at MIT on the One Laptop Per Child project. One Laptop Per Child is a renowned project that aims to create educational opportunities for the world’s poorest children by providing each child with a rugged, low-cost, low-power, connected laptop with content and software designed for learning. Cavallo is a charismatic speaker and news on the progress of the project is always engaging (as is Dr Sugata Mitra’s Hole in the Wall project in India). Questions and answers relate to bandwidth, collaboration and infrastructure.
Speaker 3: Elizabeth Hayes ‘What can we learn from The Sims about inclusive Game Based learning?’ (video) 25 minutes.
Hayes’ focuses on gender and games based learning, reporting the educational implications bourne out of non-traditional gamers (middle-aged women) approaches to game design and ‘modding’ The Sims.
Speaker 4: Sal Cooke from JISC TechDis (video) 24 minutes
Cooke’s presentation focuses on mobile device research and relations to inclusion, disability and Special Educational Needs in a wide-ranging talk that draws on multiple projects and resources. She begins by reporting recent ministerial announcements about mobile devices in Education. These include: Funding for 118 projects, 30 significant case studies with 8 to be studied in-depth to examine impact. Projects will particularly focus on:
- Field Work, Special Needs, home access, staff and learner capacity
- Innovation in the curriculum
- Motivation of the learner, particularly the disengaged
- Measures of significant improvements in learning outcomes
However, she quickly moves on to point out that much of this research has arguably already happened. Specifically, the ‘Portables in Action’ NCET Project reported outcomes in 1994 and concluded at that time that:
“Educational achievements are enhanced by pupils using portable computers, including the volume and quality of their work, particularly in accuracy and standard of presentation”
“there is clearly a great potential for using portable with special educational needs pupils”
So are the issues the same, or have they changed? Cooke covers several key areas for contemporary deployment of mobile devices and digital content. Specifically she cites issues with assessment and the process of assessment for those who require additional time and assistive technologies. How will these learners’ needs be met?
Next Cooke congratulates MoLeNET, the Mobile Learning Network (a collaborative project between the Learning and Skills Network and partner Further Education institutions in the UK) with reference to the powerful resources that MoLeNET has provide for inclusive approaches. A slide states its’ mission to:
- Make learning more convenient, accessible, inclusive and sensitive to learners; individual needs and circumstances
- Encourage non-traditional learners and learners who have not succeeded in traditional learning to engage in learning and to improve in confidence and self-esteem
- Help teachers to provide different learning activities to suit different learning styles or preferences and different ability levels.
Cooke stresses the need for this approach to be transferred into other educational sectors. She also refers to findings from MoLeNET research to refute common myths that mobile technologies might ‘somehow be inappropriate or too difficult for learners with learning difficulties and/or disabilities‘ or that ‘allowing the use of mobile technologies, particularly mobile phones, in schools and colleges would make it difficult for teachers to control classes and would encourage inappropriate behaviour‘. To support this, Cooke cites evidence and best-practice case studies available via MoLeNET and describes how mobile devices can assist in a multitude of different situations. She also lists the publication GoMobile as a source highlighting many innovative uses of handheld devices.
- Upwardly Mobile: Getting Started in Inclusive M-Learning
- GoMobile! Maximising the potential of mobile technologies for learners with disabilities
Next Cooke illustrates how technologies have moved into the home and represent an untapped learning resource that arguably represents the crux of the Inclusion agenda. One slide depicts a toy pen from ToysRUs that helps children learn to read. Cooke observes that this is the same technology that was being given to dyslexic students as an assistive technology only a couple of years ago. She indicates how assistive technologies are now cheap, mainstream and in the home and broadly conceived as ‘gadgets’.
Cooke links to further evidence from the ongoing ‘Me and My Mobile Phone’ survey by Ian Milliken at Iansyst, the University of Southampton and JISC TechDis, listing highlights from learners with additional access needs. A graph (difficult to see on video) shows that screen size and text size, though significant, are a not considered an overwhelming problem by users with access needs because there are other things that they do with a phone. She quotes one participant:
“…more mobile phone companies should be aware of the software available to help those who are sensory impaired and either offer to put the software on, suggest where to get the software or make sure…their phones are compatible with the latest software”
This research also shows that the vast majority of participants do not want to speak into their device to navigate content, but they do want to hear it.
Cooke concludes with thanks to industry for the huge leaps made in mainstreaming accessible platforms and apps. Apps that could not have previously come to market are now available and ready to use, breaking barriers that were insurmountable in the past . She cites several strong examples including:
- Yahoo collaboration with Reading University to provide automatically captioned video
- Rix Centre (University of East London) work on symbol card recognition, enabling users to surf the web and listen to emails using only symbols.
- The addition of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) to new phones in 2010. RFID has been used by the RNIB for years. With international roll-out immanent, educational applications of RFID are being developed.
Cooke goes on to refer to ‘Independent Specialist Colleges: Specialists in Innovation citing the innovative work undertaken within Special Education. She asks how this wealth of knowledge can be married to mainstream practice to for mutual benefits in national programmes. How can we make a real difference? How do we equip staff with the necessary skills? Will mobile learning require new kinds of teaching?
Here Cook returns to the push of new technologies that are changing inclusion work, using the example of RoboBraille, winner of the European Access-IT award.
Cooke states the institutional focus must be on Continuing Professional Development. What do people do with technologies in their roles? Do people create mobile resources? Do they apply different teaching techniques? Or do they use mobile devices predominantly for collaboration and communication? How many people know what is in their Single Equality Duty Scheme about Mobile learning? How do we upskill this workforce?
Cooke closes the presentation re-asserting print impairment as a major access issue. Under this topic she refers to contemporary developments in e-books and e-publishing within Education. Finally, in response to previous presenters, Cooke asserts Digital Inclusion a matter of rights, not politics. For some people it is life. She quotes a learner in a specialist school to underline this fact: ‘I cannot speak but I use my phone all the time, because I want my mum to be able to see me and see how I am’.
Over the past couple of weeks I’ve had a lot of hits from people looking for online learning materials to support a new term of CACDAP courses in British Sign Language (tap BSL into the search box if you’re looking for links to video resources). As a result I’ve been thinking about the BSL resources found online more generally. On Tuesday I was at AbilityNet’s ‘Accessibility 2.0: a million flower’s bloom’ conference. An early tip was Australian presenter Lisa Herrod (@ScenarioGirl), a consultant from Scenario Seven, and expert in User Experience for Deaf users. Her talk ‘Understanding Deafness: History, Language and the Web’ blew this subject wide open.
I’ll post links to Lisa’s presentation and slides when they become available. Follow this link to read an interview with Lisa Herrod.
Lisa’s presentation was a timely reminder of the ways in which Deaf people are often overlooked in internet practice and research:
people tend to group deaf, Deaf and Hearing Impaired users into one big group of people who “just can’t hear. Most of us know someone that has diminished hearing through age or industrial damage, noise etc. But few of us understand Deafness from a cultural, linguistic perspective, i.e. from the perspective of those Deaf who use sign language as a first language and may not be fluent in English as a second language.
British Sign Language is the first language for approximately 50,000 Deaf people in the UK. This gestural language is wholly different to spoken and written English. Lisa highlighted how developments from texting through to video conferencing have had a huge and positive impact on distance communications for the Deaf community. In this sense Web 2.0 provides powerful tools for Deaf people to come together. However, Lisa also showed how internet resources can cause problems for Sign Language users due to an over-reliance on large amounts of complicated text; text that assumes a fluent native speaker. In short, Web 2.0 is effective for Signed collaboration, but the textual basis of content is still a problem.
So far, these observations have clear intersects with accessibility issues for foreign language speakers and people with print impairments such as dyslexia. However, a specific barrier unique to Deaf people online can come in the form of video captioning. In discussion, Lisa identified a vital distinction between captioning and subtitling. Captioning reports speech directly into text, whereas Subtitling is more interpretive and intended for quick and easy understanding. Where a person with dyslexia might watch and listen to a video rather than read a text, with dubbed versions available to French or Chinese viewers, interpretive subtitling allows a Deaf person to understand and take in visual content.
Another powerful message from Lisa’s presentation relates to the global status of BSL more specifically. Early in her talk Lisa refuted a common popular misconception that Deaf people across the world have the same signed language. Spoken English and American English are nearly identical, but British Sign Language and American Sign Language (ASL) are very different. In fact, ASL has more in common with French Sign Language due to a shared linguistic ancestry stemming from the 1800s. As with the development of any language, Sign Languages have grown out of small communities and expanded simultaneously from disparate beginnings. This history forcefully underlines the difference between ASL and BSL, but what does it mean for the web?
BSL speakers are a linguistic minority online. American English is a dominant internet language, and in my experience, American Sign Language also dominate searches and resources. BSL is from the same family of languages as Auslan (Australian Sign Language) and New Zealand Sign Language, but the American orientation of internet culture made it difficult for me as a BSL beginner to find resources relevant to the UK beyond established portals and communities. In these terms, British Sign Language must be prioritised online at every level. Other accessibility concerns may be solved or mediated with international expertise. But the national and linguistic independence of British Deaf culture means that accessible video/text and BSL materials must be prioritised in the UK.
Time for me to sign up for BSL Level 2.
At the end of the month I move into ‘thesis pending’, the PhD writing up phase. As things continue here apace I’m streamlining my bookshelves. If any of the titles listed below are of interest get in touch via ttxsem at nottingham.ac.uk Links are included directing to extra information, reviews and publishers.
- SOLD The Knowing Organization: How organizations use information to contruct meaning, create knowledge and make decisions.
By Chun Wei Choo (paperback, 1998) £8.00 (RRP. £27.50) - NEW Heidegger and French Philosophy
By Tom Rockmore (paperback, 1995) £17.00 (RRP. £21.00)
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0415111811 - Human-Computer Interaction: Research Directions in Cognitive Science: European Perspectives Vol. 3
Eds: Jens Rasmussen, Henning B. Andersen and Niels Ole Bernsen (Hardback, 1991) £15.00 (RRP: £34.95) http://bit.ly/VuPBx - Philosophy and Computing: An introduction
By Luciano Floridi (paperback, 1999) £12.00 (RRP £21.99) http://bit.ly/4g34jV - The Semiotic Engineering of Human-Computer Interaction (Acting with Technology).
By CS De Souza (Hardback, 2005) £15.00 (RRP £28.45) http://bit.ly/2AoN8 - Control and Freedom: Power and paranoia in the age of fiber optics.
By Wendy Hui Kyong Chun (Hardback, 2006) £8.00 (RRP, hardback £27.50, paperback £12.95) http://bit.ly/LnUww - SOLD Liquid Times: Living in an Age of Uncertainty.
By Zygmunt Bauman (Paperback, 2007) £6.00 (RRP £9.99)
- SOLD Technology as Magic: the triumph of the irrational
By Richard Stivers (Hardback, 2001) £5.00 (RRP: hardback £45.00, paperback £14.99)
- SOLD Telecommunications and the City: Electronic spaces, urban places.
By Stephen Graham and Simon Marvin (Hardback 1995) £6.00 (RRP: hardback £90.00! paperback £30.00) http://bit.ly/be6oF - Social Citizenship in the Shadow of Competition: The Bureaucratic Politics of Regulatory Justification.
By Bronen Morgan (hardback, 2003) £15.00 (RRP: £70.00) http://bit.ly/RBd21 - Wired Shut: Copyright and the shape of digital culture.
By Tarlton Gillespie (hardback, 2007) £9.00 (RRP: £21.80) http://bit.ly/10JMAo - SOLD Cognitive Poetics: An introduction
by Peter Stockwell (paperback, 2002) £10.00 (RRP £21.00)
With the all-too-immanent arrival of the next academic year, the conference season is fast approaching here in the UK. Here are two select highlights.
First up is the RNIB’s Techshare conference from the 16 – 18 September 2009 at the ExCeL centre in London. TechShare is a pan-disability assistive technology conference and exhibition. Speakers make up a virtual who’s who of accessibility, including representatives from JISC TechDis, the W3C, IBM, Google and the RNIB. Unfortunately the early-bird discount has now expired – and there are no other discounted rates (that I could find). The costs for 2 days starts at £365 (not including VAT) with a 1 day ticket coming in at £265 + VAT. On-site registration costs more. Pre-conference workshops, accommodation and dinner are extra. However, the accompanying exhibition is free to attend and is open to the public from 12pm to 5pm on 17 and 18 September. Do note, the RNIB encourage registration for attending the exhibition.
The date for the second national conference on Accessibility 2.0 has also been set by Accessibility impresarios AbilityNet for the 22nd of September 2009 at Microsoft’s base nr Victoria Station. If last year’s conference is anything to go by, ‘Accessibility 2.0: A million flowers bloom‘ will be of great interest to those looking to find the cutting-techy-edge of accessible web development, with plenty of food for thought for those of us engaged in Web 2.0 more broadly. This is also a conference with a high precedent for impact. Presentations from last year’s event were freely available in multiple formats after the conference, as were tools and news spinning out in response to presentations.
For those in Disability Studies, academic support and more social disciplines, my tip for a highlight is Lisa Herrod presenting on the use of social networks by Deaf users. BSL is available for delegates on request. Prices for the full day are:
- Full price £195
- Promotional £170
- Student £100 (includes VAT)
I’m pleased to say I’ll be attending Accessibility 2.0 for the second year. I hope to see you there.
NEWS FLASH: I’ve just received word that today JISC have published the final report for the JELS project (full title: ’A study of effective evaluation models and practices for technology supported physical learning spaces’). This is great news for me and the team. You can read the final report on the JISC project pages, or visit the Learning Sciences Research Institute project pages.
Back from an intense and interesting time at the Interface 2009 conference. This was my first experiment with live micro-blogging (yes, Tweeting) from an event. Interface prooved to be a dynamic symposium and a real credit to the Humanities and Computer Science hosts and organisers. The Keynotes and speakers included Dame Wendy Hall, Google Geographer and ex-e-Government man Ed Parsons, Willard McCarty (who delivered a very erudite critique of inter-disciplinary machinations) alongside Sarah Porter (JISC), Stephen Brown (DMU) and others.
It was great to meet so many people from the hard Arts (such as Theology, Literature and Archaeology) critically applying new technologies. As an English graduate with a secret passion for medieval literature, I was genuinely delighted by demonstrations of research and tools opening up internet access to documents and information hundreds of years old. But this is just one of many areas where new possibilities and networks were exposed.
If you would like to find out more about Interface, delegate ‘lightning’ papers are now available on Scribd, so click if you’d like to browse the papers visit the Scribd pages. I’ve embedded my short paper on Aversive Disablism and the Internet below (click through, or adjust the settings as you like), but if Scribd isn’t for you here is the Word Version.
This week I’m travelling down to Southampton University for the interdisciplinary symposium Interface 2009, set to run over Thursday 9th and Friday 10th. This promises to be a busy event with a heavy schedule – but I’m hoping to fit some live reporting/blogging in there somewhere. I’ll be presenting my ‘Lightening Paper’ on Aversive Disablism and the Internet, so I’m also hoping resulting discussion will ferment some thoughts on this. No doubt keynotes and other presenters will also bring interesting food for thought. I’ll try and capture this as best I can.
Last week I watched the brilliant Not One Less directed by Yimou Zhang (the man responsible for directing the opening of the 2008 Olympic games and the equally accomplished Raise the Red Lantern). This is a wonderful film, that uses non-actors and naturalistic footage to startling effect. In brief, the story follows the exploits of 13 year old substitute teacher Wei as she struggles to keep her class together in a dilapidated rural primary school. The film has been cited as an astute example of censorship politics as Yimou weaves themes such as rural poverty, urban juvenile homelessness, and a woefully underfunded educational system into an uplifting story that has gained international critical acclaim. Notably, this film is also useful for educators seeking a lucid portrayal of Problem Based Learning.
The efficacy of PBL can split opinion, but has been used particularly successfully here at the University of Nottingham for Post Graduate Medical training. I’ve already cited PBL resources available online from the University of Nottingham’s PESL project, featuring staff and students’ reflections along side seminar footage . Not One Less offers something entirely different and yet in many ways entirely the same.
The film galvanises around Wei and her classes efforts to get her to the big city. What is the bus fare? How much is a return trip for the teacher and a student? How can they afford it? How much must everybody contribute? How long does each student need to work to raise the cash? In these circumstances the children demonstrate key principles of PBL to great effect. If you are applying PBL or teaching pedagogic principles and wishing to demonstrate key concepts, this film is definitely worth a look and may offer a useful illustration and vignette for group reflections and discussion.
Images of iphone with alternative high contrast text on screen
Yesterday Apple announced the next iteration of the iPhone, the 3Gs. The good news is it’s more accessible. Tim O’Brien offers a promising and comprehensive analysis of Apple’s recent developments in his article New iPhone 3G S, More Accessibility. This comes highly recommended.
