Podcast Transcription
Hello and welcome to this podcast. I’m Mike Marotta from the Assistive Technology Center at Advancing Opportunities.
This interview was recorded during the 2011 Texas Assistive Technology Network Statewide Conference in Houston.
The title of this session is Creating Accessible Curriculum Activities for the Deaf / HH. The presenter is Dan Herlihy from Connective Technology Solutions, Inc. The session description reads: Learn how to create accessible curriculum materials for the Deaf / Hard of Hearing, allowing students to meet standards as well as provide them with tools for communicating their ideas in creative ways. Use Clicker 5, Intellitools Classroom Suite, Inspiration 9, SignSmith Studio 3 along with inexpensive webcams, camcorders, and more to create accessible tests and quizzes with signed support. Learn how to create signed or captioned video for playback on an iPod, iPhone or iPad. Students easily record their own signed movie clips, drag and drop them into creative writing activities, signed story books, daily journals, answer questions on tests and more! Participants will receive a CD of sample activities.
Mike Marotta (MM): All right, we are here talking to Dan about his morning session this morning at the conference. Dan thanks for stopping by.
Dan Herlihy (DH): You’re welcome Mike.
MM: Your session this morning focused on students who are deaf or hard of hearing. Can you talk about some of the barriers to the curriculum those students face?
DH: Yeah, one of the things we talked about is that a lot of classrooms are set up to be text based and the communication mode is, either my back is to you and I am talking or even if I’m facing you, you can’t hear me and sign language is a foreign language. So, we were talking about lots of materials today are electronic and so how can we create access. We are talking about, in a sense, lower tech access – meaning I don’t have thousands of dollars to spend. What are some things that may already be in classroom environment that I can start to use? Here’s an example: you have a Flip camera. Everybody sees the Flip camera – what can I do with it? Well, we are used to shooting home movies and stuff. Now we are talking about the classroom setting. You as a student, me as a teacher. As a teacher for example, I can take a look at maybe it’s a science article you need to read for homework. I know maybe it is above your reading level. So I record myself or someone signing the text. I take the movie and I just drop it right into whatever electronic copy – Microsoft Word, PowerPoint – wherever I might happen to have the text and there you go, quick and easy you have an adapted version of it. Now I can also do things where I am creating creative writing materials for all my kids, so here’s the example. You are part of my whole class and I’m going to use a program let’s say Clicker 5. I need to provide all my kids with some kind of prompts – I don’t know what to write, etc. So maybe I put some text prompts – think about blah blah blah. Well, if I have difficulty reading it that doesn’t help me at all. We have so many AT tools that allow me to listen to it but I have all those tools available in that program so now I’m taking it that last step. Hey, take that signed video idea with the Flip, record it, drag and drop it into a cell, resize it to the size I want and now the entire class is using the same activity in a writing prompt because I’ve got video support for signing, I’ve got audio support to click on it and listen to it, visual pop-ups that can come up and maybe put some picture prompts. So were talking about only adding one more element – we are really talking about UDL now.
MM: Really, we are. You are right.
DH: So what we did was we came up with this simple activity and we looked at it and said, now who can’t use it? So everybody’s using it, you were not singled out. Oh, we’ve got something different for you and you know what, a lot of other kids are going to want to watch the movie too.
MM: I was going to say, isn’t that the way it always is. You make that curricular modification for one student and it somehow starts to help or engage some of the other students.
DH: Yeah, so now let’s take the video idea and go in a totally different direction. Maybe I have shot a video that you are going to look at and then write about an analysis. Like, watch the video and write what you observed. So you’re looking at the video and maybe there is an audio component to it, you know someone explaining it in the background and you see the video but you can’t hear what’s being said. With that same video if you brought it into a captioning program, we use Media Subtitler, it’s real easy to use. Then we have made captions from the movie. So then we talked about who would benefit from the captioning. And ironically, it is not just the hard of hearing because then for some students it helped them focus on what is actually happening here. Really kind of making it a little clearer and so once again, we look at it from a UDL perspective and, lo and behold, everybody has access to it now and I’m not thinking now “what am I to do for him?”. It is just a reengineering how I am putting materials together and once you get in the habit it’s more – open the door, it doesn’t matter who walks in the door because we have an environment where we are using the same tools. We are talking about a Flip camera right now, we will talk consumer tools and then add captioning to it with this, then drop it into this and then drop it into these programs. Here is the applications they are already using in the classroom, we are not getting anything special we are just using them in a different way.
MM: Right, exactly. Breaking out those boundaries a little bit which is very true. Can you give another example of something that you’ve modified with some AT software and then modified it in a way to accommodate someone.
DH: Well, some of the things you can do – I will use Classroom Suite or Clicker – because they are both switch accessible. So, why am I using those programs? Switch accessible, access issues. Maybe I am deaf or hard of hearing and I have physical disabilities also. Now I’m using the switch to scan through all those materials, click on the video I need, it is signing it to me, click on this maybe I’ve got pop-ups to allow me to answer and it’s switch accessible. Of course, the teacher is nodding and saying, “Wait a minute, we already do a lot of that stuff anyway for the kids.” Yes, all we are dropping in are those extra elements once again and we are putting them into accessible programs that have switch access. Can I use an overlay for alternative access to run them? Maybe with an Intellikeys keyboard or things like that? I kept pushing them back to we are using the same programs we already have. And they were like oh yeah you’re right. So it’s like, here’s one more added element. Here is SignSmith Studio. You type in and it signs back whatever you type. That’s pretty easy because if I can’t sign very well let it do it for me. Export whatever you put in as a movie so it could be exporting what kind of things to kids learn – words, reading, new vocabulary. We can make a movie of all these new vocabulary. What are they learning – the signs. They have to learn the signs the way you are learning the new word wall. So we take all those little mini movies and we put them into the same programs we are using, whether it’s Classroom Suite or whatever. We’re making quizzes with them and we put a signed video into Boardmaker Studio, now it’s a quiz there. We’ve got this other program that can crank them out quickly for me and allow me to put together with programs we are already using and I am already familiar with.
MM: And the teachers are already familiar with. So it’s not bringing new tools in to confuse and make it feel like there’s more to learn.
DH: It’s more that V8 Moment: oh my God, you’re right. And this is that snow globe moment. I know how to use a Flip camera and local we’re doing. Oh my God, I never thought of that. Shake up your snow globe again here we go.
MM: So true. Now if people want to reach out to you to find out more about some of these different accommodations you are doing – how is the best way to reach you?
DH: They can go to my website – I have some things posted there. But the easiest way is to e-mail me and even today’s handout – if you want today’s handout – here it is. When I met conferences I always give CDs away with sample activities, other handouts on it, other how to’s. What we want to do in a workshop is – I want them to understand the concept, we play a little bit, you get the idea. You get the handouts that you can take your time into it over and over again at home. I think the other thing is come talk to Region Four. It’s like, do you have the handouts from that session, who was that guy, what was he doing, can we bring him back out, what’s his e-mail address you want to contact him for other related stuff.
MM: Can you tell everybody your e-mail address?
DH: Sure. It’s dherlihy@juno.com
MM: Excellent – very good. Thank you Dan.
Thanks for listening to this podcast. For more information about the Texas Assistive Technology Network, visit the website at www.texasat.net
For more information about the Assistive Technology Center at Advancing Opportunities, visit the website at www.assistivetechnologycenter.org
The music used in this podcast is by Kevin MacLeod and is used with permission under the Creative Commons License 3.0
