Susan Alcorn MacKay

Thanks Cindy for putting so much thought into facilitating this forum. And I think that's the point...on-line leaders need to spend considerable thought and time constructing the ideal learning environment that will encourage, sustain and celebrate on-line dialogue. I facilitate a dialogue for special education teachers on-line - their biggest complaint is never having enough time and the random search for resources on-line (what a way to lose 4 hours on a sunday!)

Here. you've given a great example of prep - the wiki, thoughtful responses and great resources embedded in the dialogue - no time spent googling here!

Thanks, I'm enjoying this!

:) susan

This is a fascinating conversation though I didn't have time to learn how to do SL (dial up at home).

But I am wondering how this activity might impact a person with a disability.

Blind or partially sighted persons might find using a screenreader slow as would a person with a learning disability or mobility difficulties.

It might seem a good idea for the facilitator to find out some of these questions about their participants before the activity?

Or has anyone thought of solutions for this???

:) susan

Hi Russell, nice to see you aboard - there is certainly a huge variety of expertise on this seminar and I want to thank Jennison and Catherine for thinking of it - I don't want it to end! (I like how the messages pop up into my mail so I can read throughout the day - in between invigilating!).

We use webCT (now Blackboard Learning Systems) at our college and for the most part (except all the button are visual and some of the interactions are shown through small, blue letters such as when you want to create a link to a document within the system) find it not too bad.

However, unless someone knows something I don't, students need to copy and paste text into a screen reader - it won't allow a screen reader to work within the frames. So we put the link for the free download of readplease at the beginning of each page and give students directions.

The BIG problem is that faculty may be creating curriculum using programs within the webCT environment that are not accessible - for example, OPUS is a program that all our trades teachers use to capture demonstrations with text - like a jpg- so there is nothing to copy and paste into a screen reader for the tons of students with LD in trades programs.

So we've had to hire people to 'read' the text within that program and create MP3 that we embed in the material so students who need to hear it can.

We have discontinued OPUS for the future development but we have hundreds of high tech courses already created....

Hi Russell, nice to see you aboard - there is certainly a huge variety of expertise on this seminar and I want to thank Jennison and Catherine for thinking of it - I don't want it to end! (I like how the messages pop up into my mail so I can read throughout the day - in between invigilating!).

We use webCT (now Blackboard Learning Systems) at our college and for the most part (except all the button are visual and some of the interactions are shown through small, blue letters such as when you want to create a link to a document within the system) find it not too bad.

However, unless someone knows something I don't, students need to copy and paste text into a screen reader - it won't allow a screen reader to work within the frames. So we put the link for the free download of readplease at the beginning of each page and give students directions.

The BIG problem is that faculty may be creating curriculum using programs within the webCT environment that are not accessible - for example, OPUS is a program that all our trades teachers use to capture demonstrations with text - like a jpg- so there is nothing to copy and paste into a screen reader for the tons of students with LD in trades programs.

So we've had to hire people to 'read' the text within that program and create MP3 that we embed in the material so students who need to hear it can.

We have discontinued OPUS for the future development but we have hundreds of high tech courses already created....

That sounds great and I'm glad that has been your experience. In Canada, it has ranged from an accessible PDF from McGrawHill in 3 days to 800 pages of text with no breaks, chapters, or pix from Pearson, to inaccessible formats in a few weeks that need to be transcribed into something else, to no reply at all from most of the small publishers...hit and miss at best.

Standards would be so nice!