Mark Leddy, PhD, serves as a director of the National Science Foundation (NSF) Research in Disabilities Education (RDE) program. The RDE program seeks to broaden the participation and achievement of people with disabilities in all fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Particular emphasis is placed on increasing the number and quality of students with disabilities who successfully complete associate, undergraduate and graduate degrees in STEM and enter the professional STEM workforce. Dr. Leddy also represents the NSF on the congressionally mandated Interagency Committee on Disability Research (ICDR) where he Co-Chairs the ICDR's Education Subcommittee.

The deaf and hard of hearing communities were early adopters of text messaging. Today national alerting systems are poised to use text messaging on mobile devices. This presentation discusses field trials that provided accessible alerting messaging and reactions from deaf and hard of hearing consumers on the most advantageous features.

AudioWiz is an application for mobile phones that records audio in a user's environment and then describes it. AudioWiz balances both automatic and human-powered remote services to quickly produce accurate descriptions. In retroactive recording mode, users can ask for the last 60 seconds of audio to be described, helping to provide context after an auditory event has occurred.

This paper suggests the cyberinfrastructure movement may not benefit persons with disabilities and will fall short of its broader potential, unless closer attention is paid to accessibility and universal design. We highlight lessons from ten years of teaching in a globally distributed learning environment between the US and South Africa.

For interested registrants, our workshop includes a discussion of a pre-conference interactive student experience of our Moodle® open source course management system (CMS). Moodle® is an inexpensive and viable alternative to proprietary CMS that has an international community. Workshop attendees will see Moodle® from a teacher's perspective.

The presentation will provide results from a study designed to evaluate real time text display using automatic speech recognition, and three different methods of presenting text and non-text content in close visual proximity: a laptop, a heads up display, and a handheld device. Each was evaluated for accuracy, comprehension, ease of use, and cost benefit.

We will discuss creating access to the cultural information and entertainment medium provided by music via visualization. Important questions arise as to whether meaningful and entertaining music visualization is feasible to meet the needs of deaf, deafened, and hard of hearing music enthusiasts, and the extent to which it can be accomplished automatically without human intervention.

Visualize what you might see in a 21st century classroom. It could look something like this: Engaged learners collaborating with a global audience of peers on student-centered projects in a media-rich, creative, and interactive environment. Today's students are already there! Teachers and administrators must BEGIN with the END in mind. Are YOU ready?

The purpose of this experimental study is to examine the effects of closed captions included in an online content on deaf learners' content comprehension, cognitive load, and motivation. The research targeted deaf students whose first language is sign language, and 62 deaf students with high school diploma were tested for the research.

Gallaudet University will review the options for conducting web conferences where each participant has a separate video window ... for bilingual meetings using both ASL and English. Comparisons of the various systems will be made, including how accessible they are and how easy they are to use for non-technical users.

Social Networks: Are Facebook, NING, Second Life, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc., familiar names that hold little or no meaning to you? Is your organization planning to use social networking to provide services to your deaf and hard of hearing stakeholders? This presentation will give you a better understanding, some tips and warnings as you enter into the world of social networking.

This presentation will: demonstrate new mobile speech-to-text technology and service for communication access, discuss of applications of the service with the audience, and present research findings about the service involving students who are deaf or hard of hearing.

The ASL-STEM Forum is a community-based, video-enabled, online forum for discussing American Sign Language in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math fields. The growth of ASL in STEM fields should be community-driven, and we hope that one day the forum will become a resource for finding community-accepted signed in technical fields.

During the session, the presentation and access technology in smart classrooms, conference rooms and labs at NTID will be demonstrated. Participants will be given the opportunity for hands-on operation of the equipment, see examples of how it is used and ask questions.

Clickers and the TI-Navigator system are used in the deaf and hard of hearing math classroom to provide instant feedback for students allowing them to identify areas for improvement. These technologies help the instructor to: identify misconceptions, realize what specific topics required more explanations, and modify the pace of the class according to the needs of the students.

ClassInFocus is an online multimedia platform for deaf and hard of hearing students to access remote interpreters and captioners, manage visual attention, and facilitate interaction in real-time, in-person mainstream university classrooms. We are currently studying the use of ClassInFocus for its ability to improve classroom accessibility.

This presentation discusses the current practice of remote captioning services as used in NYCDOE for 10 students attending general education programs. The various levels of support range from the initial stage of assessment and set up for the service to the maintenance of equipment and connection. Professionals, including audiologists, teachers, network administrators, participate in collaborative efforts to serve the students whose IEPs mandated the captioning services.

This presentation describes an action research project which investigated elementary-aged hard of hearing students' vocabulary achievement, attitudes, and experiences with signed multimedia storybooks. The low-cost, interactive instructional tool incorporated remixed, animated video, signed interpretation, games, and activities, situated within the framework of children's literature. The intervention tool will be demonstrated.

We discuss the last iteration of Mathsigner®, a 3D animation ASL-based interactive software package which contains sets of activities, with implementation guidelines, designed to teach K-4 math concepts, signs, and corresponding English terminology to deaf children, their parents, and teachers. Mathsigner® is being developed using cutting-edge interactive 3D animation technology and presents many innovative features compared to other 3D Animation-based signing products.

Cisco technologies such as TelePresence, WebEx, and Unified Communications allow students and teachers to connect, communicate, and collaborate anywhere and at any time.

D-signs is a project to implement an online training system for sign language in the workplace, mapped to Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR), made available in British, Irish, Czech, Greek and Cypriot Sign Languages. As well as qualifying the hearing employers and workmates it creates a direct effect for Deaf employees through the better communication at work. This project draws heavily on the existing framework developed in www.signstation.org for British Sign Language, but sets the development in CEFR (Common European Framework of Reference) and applies it to the partners' sign languages.

In a recessionary economy, securing jobs is especially challenging. As a strategy to promote confidence and clearly-articulated responses, a web-based interactive video application was developed for students with severe-to-profound hearing loss. Utilization of the program (n= 50) resulted in favorable trends in securing cooperative work experiences for deaf college students.

Researchers have noted advantages of blogging; yet, few studies include Deaf students. Research was conducted in two sections of an English course at Gallaudet University. Findings included that blogging fosters academic and personal writing, offers authentic opportunities to practice English, and builds a community of trust and respect among classmates.

Access to Mobile Emergency Alerting will demonstrate prototype technology to broadcast local and targeted delivery of alerts and warnings to wireless devices in accessible formats; presenting alert content with accommodations for blind/low vision and deaf/hard of hearing users.

Action research is an ongoing process of inquiry, data collection and interpretation, action, reflection and transformation. It links aspects of theory, practice, and problem solving; thereby allowing the researcher to apply new knowledge and problem solving using a futuristic lens. In this poster, I will illustrate the action research cycles I will use to answer the following research question: How does using a combination of distance technology software and videophones with deaf students in my writing classes affect my tutoring practices?

The Attention Deficit Scales for Adults: Sign Language Version (ADSA-SLV) is the first sign language-based test for ADHD in deaf and hard-of-hearing adults. Presented via a user-friendly interactive computer interface, the test items with captions can be viewed in ASL, English-based sign language with or without voice, or in print.

This poster will present an overview of current 3G mobile phone video conferencing technologies that have application for exchange of ASL dialogue.

This presentation/poster session will cover resources and on-line learning opportunities available through the Postsecondary Education Programs Network for individuals working with individuals who are deaf or hard of hearing in a variety of settings. Review will include a tour of resources readily available on pepnet.org, the PEPNet Dissemination Center, PEPNet's new on-line resource search, FAQs and the PEPNet Resource Kit.

The National Center for Deaf Health Research (NCDHR) partnered with the National Technical Institute for the Deaf and Deaf community members to develop an innovative computerized health survey in sign language. This poster demonstrates the survey interface, describes its development, and presents evidence of it's usability and accessibility.

IdeaTools is an online course-building system for creating Web-based learning resources for deaf learners. Text, pictures and videos are easily combined to create visually exciting course content. New video communications and social networking capabilities allow teachers to design innovative web-based learning activities, and to integrate sign language in such activities.

This work presents an industrial design concept for a smartphone for Deaf/hard-of-hearing sign language users. Advances in technology protocols have opened up possibilities for multimedia interaction in smartphones, creating opportunities for increased access. A literature review surveys smartphones, webcams/videophones, and assistive devices. This leads to a discussion of the various design considerations involved in developing a specialized smartphone.

The purpose of this work-in-progress study was to explore the relationships between Taiwanese sign language learners' sentence comprehension and their eye movement behavior. This study used expert-novice paradigm.

I would like to share my experiences in teaching the Deaf, using a variety of Technology. I use the word technology where it does not mean only electronic or electrical gadgets. As the Headmistress of a newly started school in a rural area of India, I struggled hard with various techniques, resources and methods from gestural oral method to Maternal reflective Method. I learned about Sign Language and Bilingualism from the West. I tried all possible techniques. Did I succeed?

This poster session will demonstrate two options for using C-Print with a Tablet PC: (a) a real-time notetaking option and (b) a captioning option. The session will also present evidence from two studies that have determined that the C-Print Tablet-based service is feasible to implement in classrooms and that it benefits D/HH students' communication access and learning.

A vocabulary practice program has been developed with open web access to provide English vocabulary instruction for deaf college students. The program uses a commercially available text and provides immediate on-line feedback for the study of English vocabulary with Latin or Greek word roots.

Discover new and untapped keyboard applications which may be beneficial to the deaf and hard of hearing. To enable this, an experimental dynamic keyboard has been developed that is capable of capturing a full range of tactile forces and timing values during normal keyboarding activities.

This presentation discusses current trends of the professional education of persons with disabilities in Russia, including use of the new technologies in professional education of the students who are deaf and hard of hearing; improving networking; educational transitions, trajectories, and pathways; and overcoming communication obstacles, thus improving the quality of education. Regional aspects of developments of the PEN-network in the Siberia region will also be discussed, giving perspectives on directions of the network's development.

This paper describes a project begun in 2000 to provide Deaf adults in Viet Nam with high educational programs taught in Ho Chi Minh City Sign Language and written Vietnamese. The project is entitled "Opening University Education to Deaf People in Viet Nam Through Sign Language Analysis, Teaching, and Interpretation". The purpose of this project is to improve higher educational opportunities for Deaf people in Viet Nam and to demonstrate that most countries in the region could establish indigenous tertiary education program for Deaf people even if the country has few financial and human resources it can call upon, no previous sign language analysis, and only the most basic level of deaf education. The presentation will describe the above results in detail and how and why such results were possible, focusing on the Deaf-Centered nature of the project.

Korea Nazarene University (KNU) has been actively providing services to deaf and hard of hearing students since 1995. Due to the recent influx of students with hearing loss, technology currently being utilized to support learning cannot meet this new demand and improvements based on available technology are being explored. Technology areas which are being looked at include speech-to-text captioning, computerized visual displays, video remote interpreting, signed video-recorded lectures, and assistive listening devices. Each area will use available technology to meet the individual needs of every student involved. Utilizing appropriate technology without proper education or without taking individuality into account, will be ineffective. Technology, in conjunction with matching individual needs and proper staff education, can greatly increase the student's accessibility, motivation, ability to learn and retain information, as well as overall success.

This presentation will discuss the use of the iClicker in an NTID Biotechnology course for the first time in measuring the student learning of the Biotechnology material using real-time measuring features such as consensus and instantaneous discussion of each question, and immediate scoring uploaded to their grade on the MyCourses website.

The CUNY CART Initiative has fostered total access and full integration for college students who are Hard-of-Hearing throughout the City University of New York (CUNY). Student achievement has improved using the latest voice-to-text technology with web-conferencing software, and emphasizing training of service providers, students and faculty. This interactive presentation will demonstrate the technology and its integration with best practices in supporting students.

Current distance learning courses rely heavily on discussion board and text based assignments. The inclusion of visual communication tools to enhance the learning process within a distance learning format is becoming more feasible for teaching and learning purposes which is beneficial to both deaf and hearing students.

NTID, a college of RIT, was awarded an NSF planning grant for developing a resource center for Advancing Technological Education for Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Students. During this session, the principal investigators will share the vision, and collect feedback from the conference audience, for this national resource center.

This presentation focuses on introducing multiple hybrid readers in Czech, English, German and Russian for students with special needs. These readers are connected with the Internet where the fairy tale texts are projected on a screen and, at the same time, accompanied by natural sounding voices of native speakers reading the single stories. English version is also supplemented with a workbook and recall power point presentations.

Current social networking technologies have potential to serve as classroom tools. This presentation will demonstrate the use of social networking applications combined with an online course management system. These applications encourage user interaction and informal discussion, and provide simple ways to connect external web resources with course content.

At Rochester School for the Deaf, wikis and blogs have proven to be excellent platforms for classroom discussion and information sharing, staff development, and resource management. The capability to post information in English text and ASL video allows complete access and encourages use of academic language in a highly motivating format.

Schools throughout the country are opting for remote text services for students with hearing loss, however they are missing some fundamental training steps and intricate differences in service types. This workshop will demonstrate live and compare verbatim and meaning-for-meaning text services and offer key elements for successful implementation.

Access technologies used in Japanese postsecondary educational institutions have diversified. To share and familiarize these technologies, The Postsecondary Education Programs Network of Japan (PEPNet-Japan) held a training workshop targeted service coordinators in each institution. In this presentation, the technologies shared in this workshop will be illustrated.

Deaf students in rural areas are entitled to the same access support as their peers who live in urban clusters. Unfortunately, those resources are often not available. A panel of professionals will provide an overview of one rural school district's response to address this issue.

We will show a prototype website that will foster the creation of translations of frozen texts (that is, texts whose wording will not change, for example, famous speeches) between spoken and signed languages, e.g., English and ASL. The site will host an international video-sharing community that allows lay and professional translators to post, rate, comment on, and improve upon their collective translations.

A feature rich data system facilitates requesting, communication with clients and managing the enormous detail needed to provide 200,000 hours of access services at RIT. The system demonstrates the value of integrating data from multiple systems for use by interpreters, captionists, clients, and service managers and the potential for web-based data tools to support delivery of services.

Technology is making it possible to create and save video ASL documents. This has the potential to encourage deaf academics and students who use ASL to record, edit, submit and store their academic material in ASL without the need to translate it to a written language. We present a process that was successfully implemented at Ryerson University for the writing and evaluation of a PhD comprehensive exam in ASL.

PEPNet designed the English Splash! online resource as a one-stop-shop for English teachers who work with deaf or hard of hearing students to access downloadable materials, writing tools, educational links, curriculum examples, and much more.

Two approaches in empowering mainstreamed DHH students are investigated: multiple video perspective streams from camera-equipped mobile devices in mainstream class presentations; and indexing the videos by audio, overhead and whiteboard captions. DHH students take control of their learning process by video display prioritization, visual dispersion demand reduction and text index searching.

This workshop will be a panel discussion on Video Relay Service (VRS) and Deaf Education programs. The main focus will be on K-12 programs for deaf and hard-of-hearing students, but much of it will also apply to postsecondary programs. The panelists will be representatives from several VRS providers.

Among current media-rich websites, including game sites, there is no interactive product that mimics real-time fingerspelling. Using computer-aided instruction (CAI), Adobe Director, Flash, QuickTime videos and QuickTime Virtual Reality movie clips, the presenter will demonstrate American Sign Language Finger Challenge, an interactive software prototype that helps people improve fingerspelling reception.

This past academic year, we have experimented with technologies to capture the classroom experience and to make the capture available and accessible as a teaching/learning resource. We've been developing instructional strategies for better supporting student learning through capitalizing on classroom capture technologies and evaluation strategies for assessing the impact of these technologies on student learning.

Session is a follow-up to the Lambert prototype which is now the focus of a 2 year Stepping Stones grant. Year one activities including the development process, feedback notes, and curriculum integration results will be shown. The Lambert system facilitates natural learning processes while teaching vocabulary to young, Deaf children.

This paper presents the design and implementation of sign language terminology with multimedia in Computers and Communication (C&C) education context. The study also conducts the accessibility and appeal of the prototype made it instructive for teachers and students, many of whom do not know the signs for specialized C&C concepts.

Deaf and Hard of Hearing (DHH) students enrolled in college attend traditional in-class instruction; they typically do so with the assistant of sign language interpreter. This system is seen as lacking the clarity of direct one-to-one communication. Students whose first language is Thai Sign Language (ThSL) may have difficulties extracting meaning from written text and formulating answers in Thai or English in case of computer literacy. Many find multiple-choice or long complicated examination questions difficult to understand. Content assessment may also disadvantage deaf students if they are not provided with appropriate reasonable adjustments. It is good practice to provide DHH students with early information about the assessment strategy for their course. DHH students can then think about any difficulties they might face and identify their needs. The information provided should include assessment timetables, alternative assessment methods and alternative assessment activities.The purpose of this paper is to present findings on alternate assessments for DHH students. This study investigated two alternate assessment formats: text-based and video-based testing. Analysis includes descriptive data of alternate assessment use across all two formats, qualitative analyses of teacher perspectives, and an exploratory analysis on predictors of alternate assessment use.

People often ask questions concerning the national characteristics of postsecondary students including those who are deaf or hard of hearing. A number of national studies include such information. This workshop, conducted by an institutional researcher, and professor of Information Technology, will demonstrate how to use the NCES Data Analysis System (DAS) to create tabular information about postsecondary students. (Participants are encouraged to bring their laptop to the session and register it on RIT's network).

Asian SignBank is an online platform supporting sign language teaching and materials development, as well as Asian sign language research. The infrastructure of the database is now complete and tested with 3,000 Hong Kong signs inputted into the system. In this presentation, we will demonstrate how the Asian SignBank can facilitate sign language teaching and research. We will also introduce some newly invented procedures, such as automatic sign language teaching / dictionary compilation.

The One Laptop Per Child XO Computer has been deployed around the world to hearing and Deaf students. In 2010 PEN International and RIT's Lab for Technological Literacy began to explore improving the XO video chat application for use with Deaf Students and educators. This presentation will discuss the project.

Drupal is a free software package that allows an individual or a community of users to easily publish, manage and organize a wide variety of content on a website. We will demonstrate how we have been utilizing Drupal at NTID.

This poster session will discuss the goals and objectives of a planning grant to advance knowledge of how deaf or hard-of-hearing students access cyber-enabled social and support networks in STEM education - and to elicit partnerships with postsecondary institutions to form an alliance to help bring these networks to fruition.

The poster will present a comprehensive application of several well-known as well as less-known educational technologies for hearing impaired students, which form one integrated package of services. This is an existing application at Masaryk University in Brno, Czech Republic.

Tianjin University of Technology(TUT), which has been funded and supported by the municipal government as a key institution of higher education, is an engineering-based multi-disciplinary university that combines engineering with science, and adheres to harmonious development of engineering, science, liberal arts and management. Now there are 32,000 Current Students, 54 undergraduate programs, 39 master's degree in the TUT, and covering 20 million square feet.

In November, 2002, the Special Education College of Beijing Union University signed official agreement with PEN-International and subsequently became a full member of PEN-International on March 20, 2003. With the fulfillment of PEN-International, we've achieved great promotion in the fields of constructing internet and information accessibility, expanding the approaches of information acquirement of students with deaf and hard hearing, enhancing the communication with others, opening sights, boosting the development of teaching and education for students with deaf and hard hearing and improving the teaching and educational quality of the students with deaf and hard hearing. In recent years, the students with deaf and hard hearing of our college have won great achievements in various competitions and contests as follows.

Tsukuba University of Technology(NTUT) for the deaf and the blind students in Japan utilizes 3Dimensional modeling for mechanical drawing education at the course of mechanical engineering system in order to let the students understand better 2 dimensional drawings. It has been proved that 3Dimensional models give students appropriate feedbacks when they learn basic mechanical design.

This poster will report on the status of vocational training at the Academy of Management (TISBI, Russian Federation).

Interaction of the university's subdivisions at realization of web-based learning technology of the deaf is discussed in this presentation. A geographical-analytical reference book of Vladimir region and special program of automatic information retrieval about the disabled is worked out in VSU. The main results include network technologies of distant education of the deaf on the basis of allocated information systems of management; virtual laboratories and distant access laboratories; and a system of education quality on the basis CALS-technologies.

Special Education College of Changchun University is the first nationwide higher special education college co-founded by China Disabled Persons Federation and Jilin Provincial People's Government. Particularly for the hearing-impaired students, the college establishes Art Design, Painting, Animation Design and other college majors, and 1759 outstanding graduates have been trained and fostered for the state and society by the college with 757 undergraduates studying in the college now. After 23 years of successive exploration and practice, a higher special education mode integrating the handicapped into the normal is created. Chairman of China Disabled Persons Federation, Deng Pufang said: "Special Education College of Changchun University founded earliest, largest and with the most complete disciplines and the highest level, which is the leader in the higher special education field."

Zhongzhou University was founded in 1980, it was the first comprehensive University by Zhengzhou government. The university grew out of Zhengzhou University, Zhengzhou branch, Henan Medical University, and Zhengzhou day-college. In 1985, the university name changed into "Zhongzhou University" in the permission of Henan People's Government, and was put on record by the former state educational committee.

Chongqing Normal University (hereafter as "CNU"), founded in 1954, is a full-time comprehensive institution of higher education under the leadership of Chongqing Municipal Government of P. R. China. The first president was Mr. Dengken, who is Mr. Deng Xiaoping's blood brother.

This paper was to assess the current competency level of the School of Deaf Education and Applied Studies (SDEAS) faculty on the integration of instructional technology tools in their teaching. The study employed the descriptive survey method of research and is limited to the teaching faculty of SDEAS composed of deaf and hearing faculty-respondents. The researcher looked into the instructional technology used in the classroom, faculty's usage of instructional technology tools, competency level in the integration of instructional technology, difficulties met, and the professional development needs that will improve their performance in the delivery of instructional technology relevant to the learning performance of student in the classroom. There was no attempt, however, to measure teacher instructional performance and student performance.

The poster will present the outcomes of Charles University in Prague, Faculty of Arts, Language Resource Centre which mainly focuses on teaching English to Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing university students, but also provides other services for the students with special needs.

This presentation will highlight a college-level writing course focusing on newer forms of writing increasingly used in the 21st century such as blogs/vlogs and mixed-media texts. Using 2.0 social networking and self-publishing technologies, students turned their writing into a self-published anthology and mixed media presentations.

The Heart of the Hydrogen Jukebox is a feature-length documentary about the evolution of poetry in American Sign Language. Deaf poets had relied on creating their works in written English and then translating them into sign, rarely generating original poetry in ASL. When ASL was validated as a real language in the early 60's, an explosion of experimentation took place, giving rise to a new art form.

The presentation is focused on experiences of Jagiellonian University, a leader of the European consortium of DARE and DARE 2 projects (www.DareProject.eu), responsible for developing multimedia training courses for academic teachers. The main aim of the innovative trainings is raising awareness of disability and deaf/Deaf issues among academic teachers related to challenges of a contemporary world and to the idea of a responsible university.

Structured Online Academic Reading (SOAR) is an interactive instructional approach to enhance reading comprehension and learning through the use of a custom-built IdeaTools widget, including such features as embedded definitions, pictures, videos and questions. Applications from NTID's Master of Science in Secondary Education teacher preparation program will be demonstrated.

This presentation demonstrates an interactive DVD that examines artistic and literary expressions of the Deaf experience. Designed as a visual textbook, the project includes multimedia timelines, a video who's who glossary, interactive tools to examine Deaf artworks and literary works, and in-depth ASL commentaries from notable Deaf playwrights, poets, artists, and filmmakers.

Creating an e-Portfolio (a digital collection of work products, assignments, and personal statements) enhances our deaf and hard-of-hearing students' abilities to be competitive in the job market; demonstrates their technical, information, and communication literacy skills; and demonstrates work force readiness to potential employers via the internet. As a capstone project for the Administrative Support Technology program, it is also used for outcomes assessment purposes. It prepares our students to be work literate, to be able to contribute in the business world, and to become a part of the lifelong learning process.

An increase in online course enrollments by deaf students at Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) combined with positive student perceptions of communication ease and learning, caused us to examine the potential link of this online format to academic achievement (GPA). Research findings and their implications regarding access to learning for deaf students in mainstream settings will be discussed.

128,000 veterans who served in war zones are collecting disability for tinnitus and hearing loss. Faced with finding employment and frequently needing to return to school at the postsecondary level, veterans with hearing loss benefit from CART because they can hear the spoken word through their eyes.

A survey on Deaf high school students' knowledge and interest in foreign sign languages was conducted with 44 participants. Session will detail results. Seventy-four percent were interested in learning a second sign language and most felt that an on-line community of learners would provide the best environment.

Providing timely and meaningful student feedback is essential for language, cognitive, and skill/content development. Giving students (especially those who are Deaf/HOH) print-only feedback can be limiting and non-motivating. Using the CAIT technology platform allows educators to communicate with their students (via captured digital movies) in ASL or in English (or both). The system can also allow for print feedback to be used as a portion of this multi-format feedback resource.

Second Life® (SL) has been used primarily as a social networking tool, but there is limited data supporting its effectiveness as a learning tool. At RIT/NTID, many students struggle to learn selected hardware computer concepts. NTID has successfully used SL to enhance students learning of computer concepts and trouble-shooting. The authors will present their findings.

This interactive session will provide an overview of new innovative techniques to enhance traditional notetaking in support of learning by deaf and hard of hearing students. A pilot study will be described where presenters experimented with new graphic techniques utilizing new technologies to enhance student learning and independence.

Surdo-portal targeted to solve the following rehabilitation tasks in the process of an inclusive, professional education of people with disabilities:

1. linguistic development
2. Speech hearing development
3. Activation of mental activity
4. Problem of discussion interaction in the student group
5. Providing of feedback and possibility to correct their own errors.

An electronic system for personal registration of the use of those rehabilitation and education resources that is being provided at BMSTU to support the education process of students with disabilities has been developed. This system consists of

1. A programmer of digital cards
2. Digital cards with individual numbers of students' credit cards
3. Card readers connected with networking personal computers
4. Data base server
5. Special software to provide all needed services

Distance Learning Tools solve the following problems: (1) How do we involve parents so they can see student work, performances and presentations? (2) How can general education staff in schools learn strategies and sign language when they have a single child in their school? (3) How do we inform the community about what our students CAN do?

Webcams and web-based video technologies allow visual communications processes to be integrated in online courses. Videoconferencing and remote collaboration applications offer a way to design small-group web-based learning activities, with students and teachers interacting and communicating using live webcams. Instructors can also create online webcam assignments to assess/document student learning.