Thank for you agreeing to consult with our Russian and Czech colleagues during the week of July 15-19, 2002.

 

Background

 

The primary purpose of this faculty exchange is to provide our Russian and Czech partners with training in teaching English to Deaf students at their home universities.  We will also use this exchange opportunity to assist our guests in the technical areas of computer networks, computer labs, smart classroom technology and video conferencing.  There will be two Russian and One Czech technical experts visiting campus from the total group of 5 Russian and 5 Czech faculty. Jerry Berent has designed the ESL workshops for non-technical people to attend every morning.  While the ESL workshops are occurring in the morning, the technical experts will meet with our technical experts (you!).  In the afternoons, Monday-Thursday, we are asking the technical experts to join the English teachers in attending workshops on deafness and instructional technology.  You are welcome to join these workshops if you wish.  On Friday morning all of you who met with the technical experts during the week are invited to spend the morning and part of the afternoon concluding discussions and answering any final questions.  At 3pm on Friday, we would like you to attend our concluding session.

General Schedule

See the attached general schedule and note the days and time when you are scheduled.  All of the meetings will be lead by Heather and Steve.  We will have a sign language interpreter and Russian translator at each meeting.  The Czech speaks English.  Corinne will work with Heather to plan for noon meals.

The format of the meetings is quite flexible.  The “seminar titles” are meant to provide the general topic of the day.  I am sure our visitors will have plenty of questions to ask.  We simply want to help them resolve any technical questions or issues they have.  The Russians are in the process of ordering equipment for a PEN-International sponsored 12 station multimedia computer lab and classroom.  Plans for a PEN-International sponsored lab have been postponed, but we thought it would be very useful for them to have one of their technical experts attend the “technical seminars”

I have asked Heather to collect any materials or resources you share during your discussions.  In this way will be able to build a library of resources that may be useful to others with similar questions.

Thanks for you help and let me know if you have any questions.

Other Activities

It would be very nice if you could attend a welcome picnic, Sunday, July 14^th in the early afternoon.  We would like to introduce our guests to the NTID folks they will be working with during the week.  We will also be sending you information on evening and weekend sightseeing events we have planned.  You are welcome to attend anything that is of interest to you.

Thanks

Bill

 

Associate Professor

Coordinator, Postsecondary Education Network International

Office of the Vice President

National Technical Institute for the Deaf

Rochester Institute of Technology

52 Lomb Memorial Drive

Rochester, NY  14623