Hello all,

Norman Coombs points out that schools are "are only beginning to think
about making [e-learning] courses accessible to students with disabilities".

The 2001 winner of the "National Teaching Award for Creating use of ICT"
here in the UK was Keith Phipps.  He teaches geography using an LCD
projector with an electronic whiteboard, to project pages from his
excellent web site, where he puts all his teaching material.
Besides being a geography teacher, he is also the school's ICT person,
and furthermore the special needs coordinator!  For the dyslexics
in his class, he uses WordAloud's speech synthesiser to speak the text
on the web site.  It also displays the text a word-at-a-time in large
characters for the benefit of any pupils with poor eyesight.
But he finds that the speech "transfixes" the whole class.  It's not
that they are mesmerised, but they are really concentrating and taking
in the material - apparently more effective for being presented in two
modalities, sight and sound, simultaneously.

BTW, Keith's dyslexic pupils use WordAloud at home to read their
homework.

You can download a free evaluation copy of WordAloud from
www.wordaloud.co.uk.   A copy for personal use costs only $44.95.

Cheers,

John
--
In message  <[log in to unmask]>
[log in to unmask] writes:

>Barrier-freeEASI's online course,  E-learning, begins Dec. 3 and runs for a
>month.  Taught by Norman Coombs, a pioneer in distance learning for 20
>years at the Rochester Institute of Technology: http://easi.cc/workshop.htm
>
>E-learning, distance learning or whatever you call it is the hottest thing
>in education today, but schools are only beginning to think about making
>these courses accessible for students with disabilities.  If your school is
>involved in online learning, this course will be invaluable for you.

--
Access the word, access the world! -- Try our WordAloud software!!

John Nissen, Cloudworld Ltd., Chiswick, London, UK
Tel:   +44 (0) 845 458 3944 (local rate in the UK)
Fax:   +44 (0) 20 8742 8715
Email: [log in to unmask]
Web:   http://www.cloudworld.co.uk and http://www.wordaloud.co.uk