[Athen] The ultimate classroom for students with disabilities

[Shelley Haven]

Hi, Gerry!

Well, you said to dream big, so here's a real "blue sky" approach to  
the ultimate classroom for students with disabilities.

Back in 2001, Stanford's Office of Accessible Education (then known as  
the Disability Resource Center) began examining how technology could  
be used to create the "ultimate classroom", or more broadly, the  
ultimate inclusive learning environment.  We developed a concept  
called Proteus; based on the principles of Universal Design for  
Instruction, it was a technology-enhanced strategy for making the  
various modes of classroom education (spoken word, whiteboard, media,  
etc.) available to all students in a variety of alternative forms in  
real-time.

Here's an article I wrote about the project in 2003:
http://speaking.stanford.edu/Back_Issues/SOC63/highlights.html#high9

A summary so you don't have to read the whole article: The "aha!"  
moment was recognizing that most accommodations involved converting  
instruction into digital form. Why not synchronize and link all these  
information streams?  A Proteus-designed classroom would thus capture  
the various "streams" of educational content in a digital form  
(including lecture, whiteboard, projected media, discussion, etc.),  
convert or augment these as needed to alternative accessible forms,  
then use the DAISY protocol to synchronize the various streams of  
information.  The education could then be made available to learners  
in a variety of alternative forms, both in real time and afterwards.   
(This gave rise to the project's name: the Greek God Proteus could  
change himself into any form.)  Since everything would be synchronized  
to text versions of the spoken word, it was all searchable.  Even a  
student's notes (typed or handwritten) would be synched with the  
education going on in the classroom, kind of an über-version of what  
the Livescribe Pulse pen does with audio.

I used a proof-of-concept simulation of this "UDI classroom" to  
present a session about Proteus at the Syllabus 2003 conference.  It  
looked more impressive than it actually was, though: we used an online  
captionist halfway across the country to simulate speech recognition,  
producing a real-time transcript via Internet which appeared on the  
front screen below the slides.  People who walked in late and missed  
the explanation saw me generating nearly flawless speech recognition  
using only an Apple iBook and were utterly amazed.  It was pretty  
funny (especially when I made a joke and the faux "speech recognition"  
came back with its own impromptu retort!).

Later that year, we collaborated with Stanford's Center for  
Innovations in Learning (SCIL), Benetech, and the California Community  
College System (through the HTCTU) on a far-reaching proposal for a 3- 
year federal grant to develop and test Proteus demonstration  
classrooms, but were unable to work out the details before the  
submission deadline.  (In retrospect, I think a research and  
development project of this magnitude was simply too much for a  
disabilities office to manage, especially in light of everything else  
we had to do.)

The OAE eventually decided to pursue just one part of that concept:  
transcribing lectures in real-time both for display in class and  
access afterwards.  Working with SCIL and the university's Program for  
Writing and Rhetoric (PWR), we examined technical challenges such as  
how to capture and isolate multiple voices in a classroom (e.g.,  
during a discussion) and how to time-synch the numerous information  
streams (including student notes).  We presented our work at the  
Computers & Writing Conference in 2005.  This project was further  
"downscaled" to a goal of producing captioned searchable lectures (see  
article at this link: http://tinyurl.com/ygnf8en), though it laid some  
groundwork for Stanford's current captioning program (http://captioning.stanford.edu/ 
).

As blue sky as it was, I still believe the concept behind the full- 
blown Proteus Learning Environment is a sound approach to creating a  
technology-enabled inclusive classroom, and given the extra few years  
of technology evolution, it's even more do-able now than when it was  
originally conceived.

Best of luck with your classroom project!

Regards,
  Shelley

_____________________________
Shelley Haven  ATP, RET
Assistive Technology Consultant
Shelley at TechPotential.net
www.TechPotential.net



On Oct 21, 2009, at 1:09 PM, Gerry Nies wrote:


> I have been asked what the classroom would have to make it more  

> accessible to students with any disabilities. We have been told  

> dream big, it may not happen but we will indeed dream.

>

> So I would like to get your suggestions on what you would have in  

> the classroom.

>

> Thank you in advance

>

> Gerry

>

>

> Gerry Nies

>

> Information Technology Tech

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> University of North Dakota

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