Rewiring Inclusion: Strategies, tools and techniques to promote barrier-free learning
A national one day conference in Nottingham at the National College on Tuesday 9 February 2010, with an optional evening session on 8 February. Organised jointly by the Association for Learning Technology and JISC TechDis.
This is the official blurb but Kevin Hickey and I will be doing a workshop on the effect that small amounts of funding for Learning Support Departments have had on the college wide ethos of technology and inclusion.
Othe workshop sessions, and plenary contributions from:
· Google’s Julian Harty – “Wave, Chrome OS, Online Docs, and Android.
What impact will they have on the environment for learning?”;
· Jane Seale from the University of Southampton;
· Yahoo! Europe’s Artur Ortega – “The Yahoo! approach to accessibility”;
· Dónal Fitzpatrick from the School of Computing at Dublin City University – “The contribution that computer science is making on inclusion”;
· Peter Hartley from Bradford University;
· Alison Mills from The Manchester College – “How a large urban college has taken inclusion to the heart of its operations”;
The conference will focus in particular on browser technologies, Web2.0, e-learning, and mobile learning, and on the benefits these can offer to
all users, including those with disabilities or learning difficulties.
All sectors were represented in the workshop proposals and we are delighted that Independent Specialist Colleges were successful in being
selected to present alongside Universities, FE colleges, Project Consultants, and JISC Regional Support Centres.
Costs to attend:
£120 members of ALT
£160 non members of ALT
£100 dinner, bed and breakfast at the National College
A major new website has been launched by the Government to give unprecedented access to free data all in one place. The site was open to 2400 developers prior to the official launch on the 21 January so they could make a start on developing products using the data.
It contains more than 2500 sets of data from across many departments, is non personal and in a format that can be re-used by individuals or companies. For example, there is a video showing the traffic congestion on the UK motorways in the last ten years.
The Newspaper Club have developed a ‘postcode newspaper’ which details the public services available within a particular postcode.
Tim Berners Lee comments “Government data should be a public resource. By releasing it, we can unlock new ideas for delivering public services, help communities and society work better, and let talented entrepreneurs and engineers create new businesses and services. “
There are some interseting comments and some insite into how they’ve eventually managed to do this in the Prospect Magazine from the University of London Whitehall’s Web Revolution, the Inside Story.
I know it’s the middle of the holidays, but I’ve just seen this pointed out by Nick Linford from Edexel ’s planning and funding for FE. If a learner is unsure of their level of achievement within the national framework, they can simply fill in the forms on the qualifications calculator and it will tell them. Most people in further education are aware of the levels up to 3 or 4 (A level and foundation degree) but this will read up to level 8 (doctorate). The site then gives useful links for further advice.
The Care Quality Commission (CQC) is the independent regulator of health and adult social care services in England. They also protect the interests of people whose rights have been restricted under the Mental Health Act. They have published a five year plan outlining how they will drive up standards on behalf of people with learning disabilities. This has been published in response to an inpatient review published yesterday (16 December 2009)
One interesting statistic within the document is that there are almost 1 million people in the UK with a learning disability and of these 800,000 are adults.
Key to driving improvement will be building intelligence networks, within services, representative groups and other relevant organisations. This will feed into the regulator’s picture of services and direct where inspections should take place.
The CQC has identified three areas of improvement that they would like to make a difference over the next five years. These are:
Ensuring that the care of people with learning disabilities becomes more person-centred, including a greater focus on person-centred care plans.
Ensuring that people with learning disabilities receive care that is safe.
Improving the commissioning of services for people with learning disabilities.
Plans also include:
a special review of physical healthcare for people with a learning disability and people with mental illness in response to the Michael’s enquiry
piloting a joint service inspection of local authorities and primary care trusts to check adult safeguarding mechanism
consulting on a special review on the use of restraint and the health and social care needs of offenderg
involving “experts by experience” (people with a learning disability and carers) in a range of social and health care inspections and reviews
continuing to work with the Department of Health and the Information Centre to improve available data, including performance indicators and the possibility of having a national minimum data set for learning disabilities.
I visited the Manchester College yesterday and was very impressed with some of the work being done by the Intro to Work course. This is one of the MoLeNet supported courses using mobile technology for learners who are achieving at around entry level on the Adult Qualifications Framework. They are using the social networking tool, Ning to support each other and work together as part of their college course. It was great to see each of the learners using the site independently and showing me how to upload videos from YouTube and create mash ups of photos. The site is effectively being used as an eportfolio for the group.
Each of the group had a work placement on a weekly basis and a couple of them were doing a great piece of work for mobility training. They had taken a numer of bus rides and photographed landmarks along the way. They then used a piece of software I hadn’t come across before called ‘Comic Life‘. This uses uploaded photos with added captions to and create a comis strip type story.
While I was there one of them said to me “You should use more technology for education – it’s easier for people like me to use” I did suggest he might like my job!
There is an interesting paper in the recently published International Journal of Emerging Technologies in Learning (iJET) on the use of mobile devices for learning for the Elderly. Unlike most existing research it seeks to throw light on the use of mobile technologies for elderly learners rather than school or college students. The study indicates that elderly people are interested in using mobile devices and services, but these services need to deliver real value for them.
They look at the barriers to older people using mobile technology such as lack of confidence, age related impairments like limited vision, motor skills or cognition. They comment that ” Although there have been numerous efforts at making desktop computers accessible, there have been almost no efforts to improve mobile device accessibility.” A literature review was the first part of the research and they use some interesting quotations taken from various previous published papers.
The second stage was original empirical research using qualitative expert interviews with older people on their experiences and expectations of using handheld devices. The interviews were semi structured, face to face and greatly facilitated by the interviewer’s knowledge and extensive experience. During the interview, the researcher was able to comprehend suggestions and concerns by participants, and to immediately speculate and table possible design solutions for discussion.
The results showed that nearly 100% of the resondents found the size of the small buttons on the devices hard to use and the text on the screens and interfaces difficult to read. Key combinations need to be simple and to give immediate feedback to the user. Interfaces need to be simple, with a consistent appearence. Generally, an overriding multi-functional interface is needed for all possible combinations of tasks and user populations.
they suggest the following point for addressing impairments in vision, speech and hearing, psychomotor skills, attention span, and memory:
Use layout simplicity, clarity, and consistency
Use lower frequency tones for sounds
Design speech recognition software to cope with slower speech
Allow double-click speeds to be slower
Avoid delays and distractions to minimize short term memory loss
Use only simple, relevant graphics
Prefer short text or lists to paragraphs of text
Don’t rely on colour alone
Provide larger graphics and click targets
“One of the main objectives is social inclusion: especially the integration of older people and people with disabilities into the information society. The means to achieve this is to design mainstream products and services to be accessible by as broad a range of users as possible operating within the widest possible range of situations. “ Well I can’t argue with that.
I’ve highlighted only a few of the results of the research and would recommend anyone interested in either accessibility or mobile learning to read the full paper which is available here. Please note you will have to register with the iJET but it is a free to access journal.
This year it is 40 years since the first ‘Internet’ traffic occurred between the first 4 computer nodes of the experimental military sponsored network which grew to become the internet.
The original network was known as ARPAnet and linked computers at Stamford Research Institute and the University of California, Los Angeles as well as military computers. Forty years on DARPA – the Defense Agency Research Projects Agency are offering a challenge. “be the first to submit the locations of 10 moored, 8-foot, red, weather balloons at 10 fixed locations in the continental United States. The balloons will be in readily accessible locations and visible from nearby roads.”
10 balloons in total will be distributed across the United States.
There is a prize of $40,000 for the first person or groups of people to submit the correct locations of all 10 balloons. This isn’t some flippant piece of marketing but a serious piece of research to learn more about social behavior in computer networks and how large computer-connected teams use their resources and connections to compete.
You do not need to be resident in the USA to take part in this as the object of the research is to look at the roles the Internet and social networking in particular play in the timely communication, wide-area team-building. Registration is now open and the balloons will appear in the US on Saturday December 5th. You can register your interest here.
Not really inclusion I know but an interesting piece of work!
Google announced last week that they are introducing an automatic captioning facility for YouTube videos. In the official Google blog they state that every minute 20 hours of video are uploaded. The chances of each individual video owner taking the time and effort to caption each of their videos is unlikely. It means that most user generated content on the video sharing site is inaccessible to people who are Deaf or hearing impaired.
It uses their own automatic speech recognition (ASR) technology combined with the existing YouTube captioning system to automatically produce captions – auto-caps for short. It is initially only available on a number of mainly educational channels. Although ASR has been around for a while in the GoogleVoice application it has never been deployed on such a large-scale before.
An additional facility that has also been introduced is automatic timing. If a video owner already has a transcript, they can upload this as a text file with the video and the software will automatically link the words in the transcript with the sounds on the video.
Both of these features are not only suitable for viewers with hearing difficulties but make content available in more languages. The facility is only available in English but using the Google translation tool they can be translated into a number of languages.
Obviously this is not an exact science and mistakes are bound to occur but even with the problems, auto-caps is a major step forward in making all videos accessible.
This week I was fortunate enough to be able to attend Handheld Learning 2009 at the Old Brewery in the Barbican in London. This was the ‘world’s leading event about learning using mobile and inexpensive access technologies’. There was an impressive list of speakers and for most of the conference more than one strand happening at a time.
The first day is known as the Festival and is free. In the afternoon there were very well attended sessions on ‘Learners Y Factor’ hosted by Jason Bradbury from the Gadget Show. This involves selected school children showcasing the work they have been doing to a live audience and a panel of judges. Having learners talk about their work is an excellent idea and probably something we should think about for our annual event. Alongside this was the ever popular Pecha Kucha, an idea which we did use this year. Both these events were very over subscribed and it was difficult to even get into the room never mind find a seat.
Tuesday was the first day of the conference proper and was opened by an interesting speech by Zenna Atkins who is the non-executive chair of ofsted. She certainly surprised me with her discussion on a possible future vision of education. She envisaged an education system which allows learners to ‘benchmark’ their abilities against others as and when they felt able. She repeatedly referred to pupils and their parents as consumers and their role in pushing educational reform. One memorable comment of hers was that ‘Schools are not about education and learning they are insitutions’. She did however, frequently state that these were her opinions and not those of ofsted.
Malcolm McLaren followed her with an entertaining wander through his early educational experiences and how he was inspired by early art professors to strive for ‘magnificent failure’. His tirade against what he termed ‘karaoke culture’ was thought provoking. Yvonne Roberts managed to alienate me in her first sentence by making a facile remark about dyslexia and then went on to offend the whole room. I think she probably had something valuable to say but as an example of how to turn an audience off it was priceless.
I’ll just mention a few of the highlights for me. John Davitt opened the afternoon session on Creativity and Innovation. He started with a slimmed down ‘Blooms Taxonomy’ – Know – Show – Grow- Flow. He showcased his random activity generator for the iPhone to – “put lesson planning back where it should be – in the corridor on they way to the classroom”. The audience produced a new font using fontcapture.com and also a ‘twit-school’ using google apps.
The final morning had the sub-title Inclusion. This was inclusion in its broadest sense with speakers talking about home access computers, One laptop per child and game based learning. Professor Elizabeth Hayes is doing some fascinating work on gender and social exclusion using a version of the Sims game. It is a mod based on the best selling book by Barbara Ehrenreich on (not) getting by in modern America. Finally Sal Cooke from Techdis highlighted the good work that is already going on in all sectors and thanked the delegates themselves.
As well as the conference there was an exhibition and I was particularly taken with the product from Sanako. This was developed as a language teaching facility but it is an excellent classroom mangement system which could be used for many subjects.
The conferece had a hash tag – #hhl09 which managed to get into the top 10 globally on the Tuesday morning. If you search twitter for this be prepared – there are thousands of posts and shows how twitter can be so effective. A couple of memorable tweets included ‘great – if I miss anything , someone else will tweet it’ and ‘are power sources the new water coolers’ a reference to the sight of lots of people sitting in huddles round the plug sockets!
Finally I’d like to say congratulations to Sandra Taylor from Ashton Sixth Form College who won the secondary teacher award at the award ceremony on Monday night. It was a great conference, one of the best, well done Graham and the team from Learning without Frontiers.
For those not familiar with AccessApps and its now full suit of applications – EduApps, the team at RSC North East Scotland have produced a ‘Common Craft’ style video.
On a personal level AccessApps has provided access to learning providers that I had previously not been in contact with. I’ve done staff development for learning support staff and only a week or so ago was doing training for the inclusive learning team at Preston College. What a creative bunch they were with some excellent versions of ‘Let it Be’ and ‘My favourite things’ amongst the work done using Audacity. On a more flippant note – AccessApps has provided more free lunches than any bit of kit in the last 3 years! So thanks Craig and the chaps at NE Scotland and keep up the good work!
