MQAS and the Learning and Teaching Centre Education Studio is pleased to announce Dr. Egan will lead a Forum on the 15th May, 2012 at Macquarie University for all interested sectors in education and research. More information and FREE registration is available at : Register now
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Begins 10am, 15th May 2012. Twitter hastag #imagineEdu or subscribe to the RSS feed.
The event will be broadcast live using our UStream TV channel.
Streaming live video by Ustream
Google announced that their Hangouts on Google+ are going worldwide. These are video presentations that are automatically streamed on Google+ and on YouTube, and then are posted to YouTube. Find out how to get started with Google Handouts on Air from Read Write Web.
YouTube Demonstration of Google Hangouts on Air
Google Plus has been a hit and miss affair, and has not been a game-changer. Instead it has copied the best, and some might say worst, elements of Twitter and Facebook. There result is service that feel unsure of it’s own purpose. At the initial launch friends invited friends, yet after a few weeks it often felt like our time line was filling up with people almost randomly. In terms of accessibility, Google Plus was received a mixed verdict but has since made many improvements to the interface, and certainly Google’s efforts have improved useability. However, Google Plus remains pop-up intensive together with using icons and labels which can be fiddly to navigate smoothly.
Google Hangouts on Air might be a useful production step for lecture and tutorial broadcasting in particular. As the Hangout also provides a ‘chat’ channel, there is a possibility to create a live transcription. For those who have pre-prepated presentations with captions of annotations, YouTube video can be showndirectly. Additionally, users can share a Google Document (collaborative Word document) or share their desktop. In the past, being able to juggle applications and windows on the desktop has taken deft skill by the presenter, as they also need to hold the viewer’s attention at the same time as juggling several windows.
While the number of participants in the hangout is limited, this new service allows the broadcast to be streamed live to the internet for a much wider audience with recording and play back. Whether it will rival UStream is yet to be seen as the preference for this kind of interaction and broadcasting is highly neo tribal where users who like to do this sort of broadcast generally stick to culture within culture preferences. For those who preference Google applications, the ability to broadcast, record and integrate with a YouTube channel is likely to be appealing.
Blogger, Karl Groves recently asked “Can assistive technology make a website more accessible”. He begins with using a broad description.
Assistive technology or adaptive technology (AT) is an umbrella term that includes assistive, adaptive, and rehabilitative devices for people with disabilities and also includes the process used in selecting, locating, and using them. AT promotes greater independence by enabling people to perform tasks that they were formerly unable to accomplish, or had great difficulty accomplishing, by providing enhancements to, or changing methods of interacting with, the technology needed to accomplish such tasks. Wikipedia.
He also suggests that there are some fundamental elements to consider when designing learning materials over all devices and platforms.
He suggests there is a growing perception in which new devices such as the iPad are being discussed as improving accessibility. He discusses how applications must work with systems to offer a consistent experience. The design considerations for educators are getting more, not less complicated as content and functions now need to be accessed on multiple devices which have their own idiosyncrasies.
As an example, we have been looking at some of the issues being discussed around Moodle2‘s IOs application. An immediate issue we noticed that prompted us to look deeper was with the text field in the log-on screen. There is no way for the user to hear the text in the field itself. This causes an immediate barrier as the user cannot tell which site they are accessing (re-reading the URL) or checking the username and password.
Advocate Geoff Collis warns “beware enhancement masquerading as accessibility” where he says “As quoted from the W3C, “Accessible” means usable to a wide range of people with disabilities, including blindness and low vision, deafness and hearing loss, learning difficulties, cognitive limitations, limited movement, speech difficulties, photosensitivity and combinations of these.”
One place to ask questions online is the long-running Accessibility Forum, which has been discussing this topic for almost a decade. It has a strong public user-base and a lively discussion.
Google has recently made some accessibility enhancements to Google Calendar, Google Docs and Google Sites. Improvements have been made in keyboard shortcuts and support for screen readers among other items.
For more information:
Google Calendar: http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2011/09/improved-accessibility-for-google.html
Google Docs and Sites: http://googledocs.blogspot.com/2011/09/improved-accessibility-in-google-docs.html
Accessibility: http://www.google.com/accessibility/
Regardless of anyone’s personal view of Facebook, it is hard to deny students can be seen around campus using it in the hallways, cafes and computer labs using it on laptops, desktops and mobiles. Given few courses are conducted in Facebook, it would appear this use is for personal connections and reasons. Being ‘on’ Facebook isn’t a requirement of course, but for many students it is a digital connection that helps them maintain relationships with friends, and it’s not uncommon for students in a course to use it to connect. For those with disabilities, Facebook poses additional challenges.
According to Media Access Australia, Facebook is Australia’s most popular social media tool with approximately 10 million users locally.
“For people with disabilities, social interaction on Facebook can be especially beneficial. For people who have a vision or mobility impairment, it is often difficult to travel to see a friend, and Facebook can provide a quick and easy way to communicate and share information without the need for travel. For people who are hearing impaired, Facebook can be an effective communication platform as most of its key features do not have an audio component.”
Facebook has improved it’s accessibility over time, however it still presents issues for laptop and desktop users. Media Access Australia reviewed a range of ‘apps’ for accessibility, recommending
“Facely HD app is one of the best options for people using the VoiceOver screen reader on an iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch. While it has some minor quirks, it performs much better than the website in Safari or the standard Facebook website, and does a good job in reading out and navigating around the essential Facebook features.”
Media Access Australia has also produced a comprehensive guide to using Facebook for people with accessibility needs which can be downloaded from their website.
Hello Slide offers a free slide-solution for lecture presentations. There are many online slide hosting services these days, however Hello Slide offers a point of difference in that it creates text to speech narration of each slide. It also allows slides to be translated into 20 different languages. As much of the content given to students online is in the form a presentations and portable document format (PDF), Hello Slide allows teachers to quickly upload existing documents and then to use the editor to type in the narration for each slide online. This has the advantage of negating the need to record voice overs, which can be time consuming and require additional software such as Camtasia.
The free service makes all presentations public, however for a small monthly cost, these can be made private and allow additional storage. There is also a 50% discount for education. Given the cost of translation, and the problems often encountered by screen readers when presentations use un-friendly elements such as images and tables, Hello Slide offers a quick and value for money option for teachers prepared to offer audio narration to their content, but perhaps would shy away from recording audio annotations.
MQAS and the Learning and Teaching Centre Education Studio is pleased to announce Dr. Egan will lead a Forum on the 15th May, 2012 at Macquarie University for all interested sectors in education and research. More information and FREE registration is available at : Register now
Kieran Egan, Professor at School of Education, Simon Fraser University, Canada and Research Chair of Canada, will speak on “How to explore the potential of imaginative education in improving academic and public school activities”.
Imaginative education is a way of teaching and learning that is based on engaging learners’ (and teachers’) imaginations. Imagination is the ability to think of what might be possible; it is the “reaching out” feature of the mind, enabling the learner to go beyond what he or she has mastered so far. Connecting the child’s imagination with the world is the key to much successful teaching and learning.
Dr. Kieran Egan is a professor in the Faculty of Education at Simon Fraser University. Dr. Egan is currently Director of the Imaginative Education Research Group (IERG). His interests include trying to sketch a somewhat new educational scheme based in part of Vygotskian ideas, and also working out ways to help students and teachers find the regular subjects of the curriculum more imaginatively engaging. He graduated from London University with a BA in History, and from Cornell University with a PhD in Education.
“Kieran Egan is one of the most original “big picture” thinkers in education. I always read what he writes…Egan critiques both traditional and progressive education and puts forth his own provocative ideas on how change might be implemented.” — Howard Gardner, Harvard University.
Dr Kieran Egan is recipient of the prestigious Grawemeyer Award in Education, member of the Royal Society of Canada, Foreign Associate member of the National Academy of Education (U.S.), and Canada Research Chair in Education.
N.B Although the forum is free, positions are limited and registration is essential Register now
Photo from kandinski's flickr photo stream, licensed under Creative Commons.
MQAS has been acknowledged in the Guardian Newspaper article in which Macquarie University Vice Chancellor, Steven Schwartz explains why more universities should start publishing ebooks and how they benefit students. MQAS has recently published his eBook, the first by a Vice Chancellor entitled 10,000 books 10,000 miles: The journey towards wisdom, which comprises a number of his lectures, speeches, blogs and videos from his time as vice-chancellor of Macquarie University.
Among many bloggers, who have been discussing and writing about education for some time, eBooks are an attractive way of revisiting their work and compiling it for new devices and perhaps a new audience.
E Ink ebook readers have very similar characteristics regardless of brand, which makes comparing any eBook reader to a book a little narrow, as a more valid comparison is to an Internet powered, portable personal library, organised how you prefer with numerous other unique features such as being able to highlight, write and share notations digitally.
In late January 2011 Amazon announced that Amazon.com is now selling more Kindle books than paperback books. Since the beginning of the year, for every 100 paperback books Amazon has sold, the Company has sold 115 Kindle books. Additionally, during this same time period the Company has sold three times as many Kindle books as hardcover books. This is across Amazon.com’s entire U.S. book business and includes sales of books where there is no Kindle edition. Free Kindle books are excluded and if included would make the numbers even higher.
There are many eBook Readers available, which indicates a growing maturation of the format in the market-place. The cost of these devices begin at around $100.00. For students buying reference texts, the total cost of ownership of their first book, including the device, is on par with purchasing the print version.
Sharon Kerr, head of MQAS, says ebooks deliver a rich learning experience for students because of multimedia. It is also cheaper than hardcopy textbooks and students can download material rather than queue at university bookshop.
Steven Schwartz is vice chancellor of Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia. His ebook can be downloaded here.
The Sydney Morning Herald posted an interesting piece on the maturation of speech recognition on emerging mobile platforms such as Siri. In a review of current offerings, the comment “The main shortcoming of Voice Actions is that it’s hilariously poor at voice recognition. This may be down to a lack of localisation for the Australian accent”.
This is something MQAS is working on with our partners in the Liberated Learning Consortium to address this gap by developing an Australian voice model.
They further mention how speech recognition is now being developed as part and parcel of online tools such as Evernote, a cross platform note-taking, web-clipping and audio recording tool that stores your data online, and also devices such as Amazon’s Kindle e-book reader. This illustrates the industries focus on speech as a key feature of product offerings in the market place which educators might begin to take advantage of in the preparation of teaching materials for students.
Yesterday Macquarie University launched an eBook, 10,000 books 10,000 miles: The journey towards wisdom by Steven Schwartz our Vice-Chancellor. The eBook developed by Macquarie University Accessibility Services (MQAS) , uses the principles of universal design to ensure that content can be accessed by the widest possible audience.
Universal design ensures that products can be used by all users, independent of their ability or access need. When products are designed using these principles, they become better products for ALL users.
Publishing content using these principles will allow all students access, as vision impaired students can listen to their content and hearing impaired students can read their lectures. Using these principles gives all students a choice of how they can access and engage with their learning materials. Many students prefer to listen to their content whilst travelling or prefer to skim through and underline lecture transcripts when revising.
MQAS believes the advance of the eBook, gives publishers the opportunity, to use universal design principals, and publish content that can be accessed by all, by using their preferred mode of access.
We predict that universally designed eBooks will become the default format for all published content in future. This is partly because eBook content is reflowable and optimized for the users’ display device, whether this is a smart phone, computer tablet or laptop.
iPhones, iPads and similar devices, have an inbuilt functionality that converts content to speech or enlarges the text or interface to suit the user. Previously this functionality was only available to people with disabilities using specialized equipment. Now assistive technology has become mainstream and content developed in the eBook format can be accessed by all users independent of their sensory capabilities.
Other notable advantages of eBooks are:
- the embedding of audio and video within the text to create a rich learning experience
- students need only carry one mobile device for all their eBooks instead of a bundle of textbooks
- they are cheaper than textbooks, even after the initial cost of the smart phone or computer tablet,
- students can download study texts, when and where they want, instead of waiting in long queues at the University bookshop
For more information on eBooks for Accessibility!
MQAS on Diigo Liberated Learning Consortium Raising The Floor
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Australia License.
