disability
Flexible Learning for Open Education (Floe) Animation
Sign Media
Sign Media is a website for Deaf Media Professionals who want to improve their written English skills.
Sign Media delivers an interactive learning experience that teaches elements of written English through sign language. Users will encounter a flexible and engaging learning environment, combining elements of video, animation and game-play. All learning activities are designed around authentic media documentation taken from the production process, such as Location Risk Assessments, Crew and Actors Call Sheets and Scripts, enabling deaf users to develop language skills that are directly transferrable to their work environment.The online learning tool is accessible for users of British, Austrian and Italian sign languages.
Bibliothèque Hélène
La bibliothèque Hélène offre plus de 7.400 ouvrages numériques accessibles aux personnes déficientes visuelles. Sur inscription, chaque personne peut télécharger librement et sans redevance, des ouvrages numériques adaptés et répondant à la norme DAISY (Digital Accessible Information SYstem).
Biblioteca Sonora Digital
A Biblioteca Sonora Digital é um repositório electrónico, acessível em linha, de fonogramas não musicais (“livros falados” ou áudio livros) produzidos e disponibilizados pela Biblioteca Sonora da Biblioteca Pública Municipal do Porto. O acesso à Biblioteca Sonora Digital é gratuito, mas restrito – autenticação requerida – exclusivamente a cidadãos portadores de deficiência visual: cegos e amblíopes.
ORSEN: Online Resources for Special Education Needs
ORSEN is an exciting new project, funded under the European Lifelong Learning Programme which focusses on the provision of innovative learning practices for special needs students from rural areas. Over the next two years we will collaborate on designing and delivering online resources aimed at giving SEN students, their parents and their teachers a fighting chance in an increasingly challenging education system.
Special education needs and inclusion is an area which is both complex and diverse. Some pupils need additional help at school because they have learning difficulties which significantly affect their access to the curriculum. They are described as having special educational needs (SEN). Inclusion is about meeting the needs and interests of learners who, under normal arrangements, make less or slower progress than many of their peers.
Over the last few decades, the development of inclusion has become central to international education policy and has forced the major changes in national legislation in many countries regarding how we deliver our teaching and learning in schools. The first step toward delivering an inclusive curriculum is taking into account student learning needs and development, with an awareness of appropriate teaching and learning methods, as well as the application of appropriate tools and equipment. An inclusive curriculum means one curriculum for all students rather than a separate curriculum for students without SEN and another for students with SEN. An inclusive curriculum, recognises the need that schools need to be organised, with the individual differences of students in mind and allow for scope and flexibility to enable all students to achieve their goals.
Aims and Objectives
The Aims of ORSEN are:
1. To develop an appropriate technology infrastructure for in-school provision of SEN curricula.
2. To develop 4 curricula to assist in the inclusion of children with SEN in the classroom.
3. To develop and implement in-service training to support the continuous professional development of teachers.
4. To provide supports for parents of SENs to enable them interact with the new learning environment.
5. To support managers in education to work with multi-site education provision through online environments.
Some features of the ORSEN project
To develop and pilot an open access SEN virtual classroom providing:
1. ORSEN supports the concept of inclusive education.
2. ORSEN will be ‘rural proofed’; it will meet the needs the needs of SEN living in more remote areas.
3. ORSEN will target resources to benefit children in the 12-16 years age range, who have mild SEN.
An adaptative learning system for reasoning about stories with poor comprehenders and their educators
An adaptative learning system for 7-11 year old children with text comprehension difficulties, hearing and deaf, is the goal of the TERENCE European project, carried out in partnership by organizations from eight countries in Europe. Adaptive learning means designing, evaluating and presenting the learning material so that each user can go through the material at his/her own pace.
The TERENCE project is coordinated by the University of Aquila in Italy, and partners AMNIN, Slovenia, the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium, the Centre for Biomedicine, Intelligent Systems, Educational, Technology, Spain, the FBK Research Centre, Italy, the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Italy,the L3S Research Centre, Hannover, Germany, Moholy-Nagy University in Budapest, Hungary, the University of Padova, Italy, SIVECO Romania, the University of Sussex, Great Britain, the University of Verona, Italy. The development of children's capabilities to comprehend written texts is a key element to their development as young adults. Text comprehension skills develop enormously when children are aged 7 to 11 years old. Nowaday, more and more such children, hearing and deaf, have text comprehension difficulties related to inference-making skills, and hardly understand what they are reading albeit they can read the single words of the text fluently.
A few adaptive learning systems (ALSs) promote reading interventions, and none is developed for poor comprehenders, hearing and deaf. TERENCE aims at filling such a gap: it aims at employing stories for poor comprehenders as reading material, and tackling specific high-level cognitive text processing skills through adequate smart games for reasoning about stories. More precisely, the system's smart games, developed and classified according to specific pedagogical models, will stimulate children to reason about the events of stories, written both in Italian and English. The guidelines, the models developed, as well as the entire learning system will result from a cross—disciplinary effort undertaken in various and complementary fields of activity (art and design, computers, engineering, linguistics and medicine), while continuously involving also the project’s end-users- both children with hearing difficulties and their educators from schools in Brighton(UK) and Veneto region (Italy).
Moreover, the system will allow teachers to choose and custom-tailor the types of stories and games according to the needs of their learners.
In conclusion, TERENCE aims at offering innovative usability and evaluation guidelines, pedagogical models, AI technologies, and an ALS for reasoning about stories, in Italian and in English. The guidelines, the models and the system will be the result of a cross-disciplinary effort of European experts in diverse and complementary fields (art and design, computers, engineering, linguistics and medicine), and with the constant involvement of end-users (persons with impaired hearing and their educators) from schools in Brighton (Great Britain), and from Veneto region (in Italy). The project has been launched on October 1st, 2010, having an implementation period of 36 months.
Disabilities and Education
In March 2012, OBESSU will hold a Study Session on the topic of disabilities thanks to the financial support of the Council of Europe. Disabilities and education is a very relevant and current topic and it is important to discover the European framework as well.
The area of Education and Training is a very special cause and very close to OBESSU’s values and standpoints. The topic of disability is also present in the European Commission’s strategic framework “Education and Training 2020" within its objective to “promote inclusive education and lifelong learning for pupils and students with disabilities”. By the use of this framework the Commission has a more powerful instrument to try to influence national level education policies.
On 15th November 2010 the European Commission adopted the EU Disability Strategy 2010-2020 setting new goals within the framework of the UN Convention on Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
The United Nations Convention sets the minimum standards that each country should achieve regarding the safeguard and well-being of people with disabilities. In Europe there are around 80 million people falling within the scope of the UN Convention: they often live at the edge of our society and not every Member State is doing the same to help and integrate them. The EU Disability Strategy aims at making it easier for people with disabilities to go about their daily lives like everyone else and enjoy their rights as an EU citizen.
The Strategy contains the 8 “Areas of Action” where improvement is needed: Accessibility, Participation, Equality, Employment, Education and training, Social protection, Health, and External Action.
20th Annual EDEN Conference Best Research Papers
Student Perceptions and Preferences for Tertiary Online Courses: Does Prior High School Distance Learning Make a Difference? Dale Kirby, Dennis B. Sharpe, Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada & Michael K. Barbour, Wayne State University, United States of America and Local Support for Online Learners with Possible Learning Disabilities Torstein Rekkedal, NKI Distance Educat
Council Conclusion on support of the implementation of the European Disability Strategy 2010-2020
The Council invites Member States to support relevant initiatives aiming to ensure that persons with disabilities have access to quality education and training on an equal basis with others.
One of the main objectives is to increase their knowledge, skills and qualifications in order to promote persons with disabilities' mobility and employability.
The invitation also calls to promote the exchange of good practices, including comparative studies, with regard to support and assistance for persons with disabilities, with a view to improving their access to the education system at all levels, including, for example, the use of assistive technologies.