Friday, December 02, 2016

Opportunity to Impact Web Accessibility Standards

Short Notice!  Act before 9 December 2016.

The W3C WCAG Working Group's Silver Task Force has issued an invitation for submission of names of people, groups, or organizations to be considered as stakeholders for creation of future guidelines.

WCAG 2.0 is eight years old and ready for an update.  Silver is the code name for the new WCAG version.  The Silver Task Force is building it.

If you are interested in being considered as a stakeholder, or wish to nominate an organization or group you can go to this link:   http://goo.gl/QeYbOl

You can nominate as many names as you want, including yourself, but you must do it before December 9, 2016.

Monday, November 14, 2016

Is Your Website Accessible?

Mentioned in a previous post, the U. S. Dept of Education's Office for Civil Rights (OCR) in Region X, cited 11 educational organizations in seven states in their region (Western US and Pacific Islands) for simple accessibility problems with their websites.

It appears that OCR may have only looked at the front page, often a Special Needs information page, and something else.  In one case, the Assistive Technology page.  I'm guessing they did the analysis in a very simple way.  Used one of the existing Website accessibility checkers.

You can check your favorite educational institution's website.  It's easy.  I generally use two sites because they report a little differently.  Note that with these you can only check URLs that do not require password access.

Go to each of these and enter the URL of the page you want to check.

Each will generate a report.  (Select WCAG 2.0 AA for CynthiaSays -- that's the standard DoJ and OCR use.)  

The reports reflect differences in how the two sites do the analysis so it's nice to get the two.  Here are the two reports on the same public school district website.  

Looks like WAVE's summary shows 6 errors. I'd speculate that OCR would cite this district.  And one of the issues for this site is lack of Alt Tags.  Which is what OCR cited on each of those 11 non-complaint websites.  

OCR uses it's legal authority to enforce both Section 504 and Title II of the ADA in each letter.

The school district site I used is my local district, and I've told the district administrators about the problems with the website -- and sent them reports at least 3 times over the past 2 years.  Once before the new site was up, and I had hoped they'd use the info I provided to deal with their web contractor.  They didn't.  Most recently, I contacted the district's Section 504 Coordinator with the information and volunteered to provide some assistance.  I didn't get a response.

I see two different ways of proceeding.  I could file a complaint with the regional OCR office (not Region X), but that will take time for OCR to investigate the complaint depending on how busy they are.   What I plan to do, is make an appearance at an upcoming Board meeting and use my 3 minutes of public comment to raise the issue. I'll probably print out and give them copies of this post.  I'll report on this in a future post. 

Wednesday, November 09, 2016

Accessibility Training Required by OCR and DoJ in Consent Decree and Resolution Letters

I promised to get back to this topic a week or so ago.  This post provides academic institutions with guidance on the content of accessibility training they should be providing.

Before I started writing this post I found another set of accessibility findings. The Region X Office for Civil Rights had and interesting announcement earlier this year.  They reportedly received complaints involving access to websites at 11 different education organizations.  OCR cited Section 504 and Title II of the ADA in each letter. Each of the 11 parties, including two state education agencies, and 9 K-12 organizations settled (resolved complaint) before OCR completed their investigation.

Each of the organization's main website, and at least a couple of additional pages were cited because the sites used graphics without alternative text tags. (The easiest thing to check.)   I believe that by settling before OCR completed their investigation, the institutions avoided more detailed findings. I've said right along, settle as soon as you can.

As a part of the settlements, each of the organizations is required to provide "training on website accessibility for all appropriate personnel." That is all the detail that is in the letters and the letters are all basically the same.

The Department of Justice (DoJ) on the other hand, in the Dudley v Miami Consent Decree was much more specific about the content of the accessibility training.  I've previously posted the list of folks DoJ wanted trained.  The training topics include:

  • the required Accessible Technology Policy which is spelled out in detail in the Consent Decree
  • identity and responsibilities of: 
    • University Accessibility Committee
    • Accessible Technology Coordinator
    • Web Accessibility Coordinator
    • Accessible Technology Specialist
    • personnel in Student Disability Services
  • common assistive technologies used by individuals with disabilities interacting with computers, website, and tools used for learning in and out of the classroom
  • common technological accessibility barriers
  • common methods, resources, etc. for ensuring accessible documents
  • Overview of accepted accessibility standards including 
    • WCAG 2.0 
    • UAAG 1.0
    • MathML
    • DAISY
    • EPUB3
    • BANA 
    • and others
  • consideration of the selection of course texts that have accessible electronic formats
  • the process for requesting and receiving accommodations
  • resources, support, and time frame to deliver accessible converted materials
  • guidance for creating accessible documents
And that's most but not every item included in DoJ's requirements.

Does your institution provide accessibility training, and does it include all the topics DoJ required of Miami?

According to their website, Miami has almost 19,000 students; offers 120 bachelor's, 60 master's, and 13 doctoral degrees. I was unable to determine how many faculty and staff are employed there.

Monday, November 07, 2016

More on Accessibility and VR.

If you haven't read the previous post about accessibility and VR you might want to check out that post  and follow the link there to a detailed discussion of accessibility and VR on another blog.  These two posts (and their links) provide a great deal of information about accessibility issues and VR.

VR is one of the current hot technology topics in education, and it's starting to be used in business training too.

The video: Accessibility and VR: Accessibility Basics and How They Relate to VR  by Brian Van Buren is at the end of this post.

This is worth the time (The video runs 43:31) if you have any interest in accessibility in gaming and especially VR (and AR/MR).   Brian is talking to an audience that I assume is predominantly VR designers, so some of the talk is technical, but most of it is to help the designers understand accessibility issues.

I found it helpful because it expanded my thinking about accessibility into the gaming environment which is starting to show in K-12 and higher education. Brian makes the connection to ADA and Section 508.  He points out that Section 508 is for government purchase of technology and so anyone hoping to sell VR products to governments needs to make the product accessible.  He points out that while Section 508 is a US law other countries have similar legislation.  What he doesn't reference is VR as starting to move into academic settings and the need to meet both ADA and Section 504.

Brian cites an  projection that by 2024 VR will be a $120 billion industry, and he indicates that may be optimistic, but still...

My favorite line  comes at the end, in Brian's final final thoughts where he says -- and it's on the slide:
"Thinking about accessibility makes you a better designer: designing for accessibility creates a better product" 


Wednesday, November 02, 2016

VR and Accessiblity

I've been wondering about accessibility issues with virtual reality (VR), especially since this seems to be the year of VR.  I've not seen any discussion or even hints at accessibility issues in VR, but clearly there are accessibility issues.  

A couple of years ago I had a discussion with a colleague about accessibility in computer gaming.  This was in conjunction with an educational program that taught students to write programs for games.  I started looking for information about accessibility in gaming.  I was introduced to the Games_access mailing list.

In a previous life I'd been working with folks at IGDA (International Game Developers Association). The Games Access folks are a Special Interest Group (SIG) of IDGA.
To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit
https://pairlist7.pair.net/mailman/listinfo/games_accessor, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to
games_access-request@igda.org You can reach the person managing the list at
games_access-owner@igda.org

I've been on the list now for a couple of years and it's been informative.  There are game designers with disabilities on the list and folks working to make games more accessible.  Some of the discussions they get into are very technical and others much more fitting with my interests.

All this is by way of introducing you to a very interesting blog post by Ian Hamilton about VR and Accessibility on Gamasutra.

It's long and detailed and raises accessibility issues beyond the more commonly identified issues. If you're interested in accessibility issues and VR this is a great read.  It begins:

Virtual reality brings some fantastic opportunities for people with disabilities. New experiences, therapeutic benefits, even accessibility for people who have better head control than hand control. But it also brings considerable new barriers, with great potential to lock people out from these benefits.
Some of the barriers that VR presents are unavoidable, there are people who will simply never be able to take part in VR as it currently exists. From the people who will never be able to overcome simulation sickness, to people who simply aren’t physically able to have a bulky device on their head.
But other barriers are avoidable, through the right design considerations - through accessibility.
It is still early days for this iteration of VR, so this post doesn’t aim to provide all of the answers or form a concrete set of guidelines. There will be issues that are not covered here, and still there’s huge room for innovation, discovering new and better design patterns. 
continue reading this post at:
http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/IanHamilton/20161031/284491/VR__accessibility.php

Thursday, October 27, 2016

What Accessibility Training Does Your Institution Provide?

This is the second in a series of posts analyzing the Dudley v Miami Consent Decree.    

Accessibility Training

The Department of Justice (DOJ) gives the institution 6 months to provide mandatory accessible technology training to all employees responsible for: 
  • content on the institution’s websites; 
  • providing support for educational technology; 
  • procurement of educational or digital technology; 
  • converting materials into accessible formats.  
And, includes training for employees in Student Disability Services, and the Office of Equity and Equal Opportunity.  Also included in the training will be academic technology specialists from every college, school, and library as well as the person in HR responsible for ADA compliance.

In addition, the institution is required to provide training to all faculty and their administrative assistants.  Teaching assistants and student assistants also get trained if they help in any course with at least one student registered with Student Disability Services, or if they are hired to provide accommodations to students with disabilities.
   
That’s pretty comprehensive.  Anyone that has something to do with student learning.

Once all this training has taken place, the institution is not done.  It will need to provide training for all new hires that fall into one of the roles identified.

This is DoJ looking at ADA compliance. The Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) deals with Section 504 compliance.  While there is overlap between the laws, there are also differences which play out in differences in recommendations/requirements.  Only about a third of students with disabilities self-disclose to the disability services office, so OCR has taken the position that digital materials need to be accessible even if there’s not a student known to disability services in the course.  DoJ is looking at more than just online accessibility, they expect the training to look at all potential technology barriers.

A more detailed discussion about the focus of the training will be in an upcoming post.

If your institution is not providing accessibility training to all the employees, you should be developing that training plan now.

Looking for help designing and/or providing that training, let me know. I can help.


Tuesday, October 25, 2016

Do You Have (or Need) An Accessible Technology Coordinator?


What is an Accessible Technology Coordinator?  According to the US Department of Justice (DoJ) in a recent Consent Decree with Miami (of Ohio) University required the creation of an Accessible Technology Coordinator (ATC), who reports directly to the Vice President for Information Technology. 

In the Consent Decree DoJ specified that the ATC will be knowledgeable concerning:
  1. The general requirements of Title II of the ADA and its applicable regulation;
  2. Accessibility and usability of web content;
  3. Accessibility and usability of technology, including equipment and devices used in classrooms and laboratories (e.g., clickers, lab equipment, smart boards);
  4. Testing and evaluation of the accessibility of web and other technologies;
  5. The W3C's WCAG 2.0, ATAG 2.0, UAAG 1.0, WAI-ARIA 1.0, MathML, WCAG2ICT, and any successors to those standards
  6. DAISY and EPUB 3. (Open Accessible Standards for publishing)

And the ATC will be familiar with:
  1. Accessible document development and remediation; and
  2. The appropriate provision of auxiliary aids and services for students with disabilities in non-electronic or non-digital formats, such as Braille hard copy, tactile graphics, large print hard copy, sign language interpretation, and reasonable modifications to policies, practices, and procedures, such as procuring technologies outside of general policies and making reasonable security exceptions for assistive technologies.

In addition the ATC will make quarterly reports to the Vice President for Information Technology and the Office of Equity and Equal Opportunity.
As if that’s not enough, the Accessibility Technology Coordinator will also serve on the University Accessibility Committee to be chaired by the Vice President for Information Technology.  The Committee will meet at least quarterly and will include the Web Accessibility Coordinator, the Accessibility Technology Specialist (positions created in the Consent Decree) and representatives from ten departments across the university.
Now you know what the Accessible Technology Coordinator is and what DoJ has created for a position description.  Do you have the need for an ATC?  Are you in full compliance with ADA Title II?
The Consent Decree, can be provide guidance for all academic institutions that need to meet Title II of the ADA (that's most academic institutions)  as well as governmental agencies and businesses that have a web presence.
There is a lot more in the Consent Decree including creation and promulgation of an Accessible Technology Policy; training of employees; creation of a procurement process for software and web technology to ensure those products are accessible.
The full document runs 56 pages, but only about 32 of them provide guidance specifically for academic institutions on what they should consider doing to meet Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 and amendments. 
I’ll cover other aspects of this Consent Decree in future posts.









Friday, September 23, 2016

Another MOOC in Trouble with the Department of Justice

U.C. Berkeley has been offering public, free MOOCs taught by their faculty.   But, like the MIT/Harvard MOOCs that were identified as problems a year ago, the Berkeley MOOCs were identified as no accessible and two individuals brought their concern to the US Department of Justice.
The story was reported by Inside Higher Education September 20.  Included in the story is a link to the DoJ letter to UC Berkeley.  The first two paragraphs are important for any folks who want to know the legal justification and reason to pay attention to accessibility issues.

The United States Department of Justice (the Department) investigated the University of California at Berkeley (UC Berkeley) under title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA), as amended, 42 U.S.C. §§ 12131-12134, and the regulation implementing the ADA, 28 C.F.R. Part 35. UC Berkeley is a public entity subject to the ADA and its regulation. 42 U.S.C. § 12131(1)(B); 28 C.F.R. § 35.104. The ADA prohibits discrimination against qualified individuals with disabilities by public entities. The Department is authorized to investigate compliance with the ADA and issue findings. 42 U.S.C. § 12133; 28 C.F.R. § 35.172. The Department investigated the accessibility of UC Berkeley’s free audio and video content available to the public on UC Berkeley’s YouTube channel and iTunes U 2 platform as well as its Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) offered on the edX learning management platform (UC BerkeleyX); collectively, we refer to audio and video content and MOOCs as “online content.”
The ADA’s nondiscrimination mandate states that no qualified individual with a disability shqall, by reason of such disability, be excluded from participation in or be denied the benefits of services, programs, or activities of a public entity, or be subjected to discrimination by a public entity. 42 U.S.C. § 12132; 28 C.F.R. § 35.130(a). The Department is authorized to file a civil action in federal court if the Attorney General finds a violation of the ADA. 42 U.S.C. § 12133; 28 C.F.R. Part 35, Subpart F. 
UC Berekeley's first response has been to threaten to remove all inaccessible content from their courses, or stop offering the MOOCs.  They have gotten some sympathy in crafting DoJ as the big bad wolf in this situation. Others have no sympathy.  Of course ADA was passed in 1990.

UC Berkeley pointed out that the letter of findings only applies to their free, public MOOCs and not to their credit bearing online courses.  That is true.  The complaint was focused on their public MOOCs.  But, the legal issues, as I have written before, apply to all digital content.  ADA and Section 504 can both be used to cite accessibility problems in the Berkeley online courses and digital that are password protected.

The University of California System, according to the DoJ letter has had an accessiblity policy in place since 2013 which sets "forth technical standards and adopts the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 at level AA success criteria."  

And then DoJ states:
While the University of California’s Information Technology Accessibility Policy adopts the WCAG 2.0 AA technical standard, which provides clear parameters for ensuring online content is accessible to individuals with disabilities, UC Berkeley has not ensured compliance with its policy. 
That makes it clear that its not enough to have a policy, there need be actions to ensure compliance. This letter of finding pprovides helpful guidance for academic institutions everywhere in the US.

Monday, August 22, 2016

Coastal Bend College Workshop

Last week was an interesting week.  On Monday I had a 13+ hr flight back to the US from New Zealand.  Of course on each end there was additional flying time to connect to the direct Auckland-Houston flight.  Then on Thursday I did a 3.5 hr workshop at Coastal Bend College for some of the distance learning faculty about course design.  (The slides are below and on my slideshare site as is my norm.)

I thought the workshop went well.  It got positive comments from participants.  I know that for some folks what I said was just reinforcement for what I was saying.  And, there were new ideas.  It also seemed that the universal design for learning concept was new. (See previous postings here and on slideshare for UDL sessions.)

More is happening and now that I'm over the jet lag I'll be doing some other postings.

Wednesday, August 10, 2016

Universial Design for Learning

The past two weeks, I've done two presentations, one online and the other face-to-face about Universal Design for Learning (UDL).  One was for the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, NZ and the face-to-face one here in Dunedin for the University of Otago.  I used the same slide set for both but handled the face-to-face differently with more interaction and with the participants in teams.   I'll use the majority of the slides and approach with a group in the US when I return next week.

It was intersting in thinking about UDL for these presentations to realize I was pushing UDL a couple of decades ago.  I was a member of CoSN back then, and on the now disbanded Emerging Technologies Committee.  Then we did an annual report on things to watch -- emerging technologies -- and I pushed for a section in one report on UDL.


Friday, July 15, 2016

Designing Digital Materials That are Accessible for All Learners. A webinar for the University of Otago


I'm in Dunedin, New Zealand and will be doing a webinar for the Distance Education Office.  The topic, of course, is online accessibility.  It's interesting doing this in New Zealand because I've recently seen a posting that said New Zealand and Australia were doing a better job with accessibility than the US was.  There is a very nice piece of legislation (see slide 3)
The Human Rights Act of 1993 covers disabilities, which people have presently, have had in the past, or which they are believed to have. 
The Human Rights Act of 1993 makes discrimination unlawful when it occurs in:
  • •public education and health services
  • •and access to education.

And there's the Kia ÅŒrite - Code Of Practice: New Zealand Code of Practice for an Inclusive Tertiary Education Environment for Students with Impairments.  That provides very nice guidance for higher education.  But the Code was last updated in 2007 and doesn't mention online,websites, or distance learning.  It does recommend captioning for video though.  And it recommends staff development on the issues, so the webinar fits in very nicely.


Tuesday, June 14, 2016

Accessibility Issues in Online Education and Websites: Current Case Law and Resources

June 15, 2016 I've been asked to make a presentation (see slides below) to the Learning Technology Advisory Committee of the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board.  I've only got about 15 minutes, so the content is all in the first 10 slides.  There are relevant resources in the remaining ones, and the folks can access the full set here or on my SlideShare account.



Friday, June 03, 2016

CyberLearning 2016 and Accessibility

CyberLearning 2016 happens the first weekend in June, rescheduled from February when it was postponed because of a winter storm in DC.  I had already put together the slides and posted them here and on SlideShare.  You can find them in an earlier post.  

But, as has been the case with this issue, things change.  Not the basics of the case law, but there are new and different resources as the field discovers the importance of this issue.  And, because I do this, I have folks sending me resources, for which I'm grateful.

What that means is;

  1. if you find a new resource, please send me the information.  I'd rather have multiple folks telling me about something I already know, then risk missing something really great that I just hadn't seen.  and
  2. every time I post new slides they're different.  Not totally different.  The case law has been consistent over the past decade.  The difference is in the resources. 
Just this past week I was introduced to two new publications that look to be interesting.  The Book Industry Study Group has released the Quick Start Guide to Accessible Publishing.  And, there is Vendor Guide to Web Accessibility for Higher Education Customers prepared by the Committee on Institutional Cooperation.  Of course, I prefer the second, as it focuses on Web Accessibility and I have less involvement and interest in book publishing at the moment.

Here are the slides for my June 2016, CyberLearning 2016 presentation.



Thursday, March 24, 2016

TxDLA 2016 and Accessibility

I didn't post about the TxDLA Accessibility Certification Program because it filled up within 36 hours of being available.  This is the pilot offering.  It started a week ago as an online course, but becomes a hybrid next week with the participants attending the TxDLA 2016 Conference's Accessibility Pre-Conference Workshop.  Then, during the conference, participants are expected to attend a specified number of concurrent accessibility sessions.  The final component of the certificate program is a capstone project where participants put all their learning together.  I contributed to the initial legal module and will be doing  more on the legal issues at the pre-conference workshop.

I'm going to do some more on legal issues because of the Section 504/Section 508 confusion.  But that's confounded because there's a state statute that adopted Section 508 standards for all Texas websites.  So, while in other states, reference to Section 508 should only be the standard used to determine accessibility but not to cite as non-compliance, unless the source is a Federally funded site. And technically in Texas Section 508 shouldn't be cited, it should be Texas Section 206.70

Elsewhere on the conference agenda, I will be on an accessibility panel and have a session for Section 504 Coordinators.

The session The Section 504 Coordinator's Role in Accessible Online Learning is a new idea.  I think there will be few if any Coordinators at a TxDLA conference, but there might be folks who want to take information back to their Coordinator.  I used to do training for Title IX Coordinators, and while the content is different, the role of the Coordinator is similar.  I got the idea because in some of the OCR resolution agreements there are recommendations about professional development for the Section 504 Coordinator.  I'm planning on having a lot of discussion rather than presentation, but there will be some slides, which are included below.

Other TxDLA sessions I'm involved with include:

  • serving as Provocateur for a panel by UNT folks about their Amazing Instructor Support... for their accelerated online Master's Program in Education Leadership; 
  • holding a discussion with a professor from the UNT Education Leadership program about What Administrators Need to Know for Successful Online Education Programs; and 
  • a panel participant on Discussing Accessibility:Best Practices & Considerations for Online/Distance Education.



 

Wednesday, February 10, 2016

Professional experiences of online teachers in Wisconsin: Results from a survey about training and challenges

REL Midwest; Regional Educational Laboratory at American Institute for Research*, has released a report with the results for a survey about training and challenges for online teachers in Wisconsin.   They conducted a webinar this week to talk about the report, and in the webinar they included information from the use of the same survey data with Iowa Online teachers.  I attended and have to say there weren't any surprises.

The biggest concern/challenge expressed by the respondents was needing help to address student perseverance and engagement.

What was missing from the webinar presentation, and missing from the report itself is a description of the pedagogical approach used by the Wisconsin Virtual School and Iowa Online.  Without that information, the survey has little relevance to the field. There are substantial differences both programatically and instructionally between synchronous and asynchronous programs.  The failure to describe the programs shows a lack of understanding of online education on the part of the researchers.  In the webinar, I was able to ask for that description, but unless one is familiar with the two programs the program approaches are not well articulated in the report.

Here is my standard rant about researchers who want to study a single aspect of online learning, but don't put the results in a context. Typically they take their results and lay claim to the entire field of online learning.  The REL Midwest folks didn't do that, but they do imply the data, while being for Wisconsin might have broader implications. If they'd framed the Wisconsin Virtual School approach the applicability might have been better.

A couple of interesting items in the report.

On page 4 this statement:
69 percent reported participating in professional development before teaching online but after preservice education, and 31 percent reported that online instruction was covered during their preservice education  
On page 9 they say:
Wisconsin Virtual School requires teachers to participate in training before teaching online and offers multiple forms of ongoing professional development.
 But in the summary they say:
All Wisconsin Virtual School teachers reported participating in training or professional development related to online instruction either before or while teaching online, 
The framing of the question does not then make it clear if some teachers taught online before professional development or training to teach online.

 I have to admit surprise and somewhat disbelief that 31 percent of the teachers reported online instruction was covered during their pre-service education.  That figure seems high based on conversations with faculty and administrators of pre-service education.

I was interested to see the  focus of the training and professional development.
At least 50 percent of teachers reported participating in training or professional development in eight of the nine practice areas in the survey: technology (100 percent), professional practice (81 percent), facilitation (79 percent), online course customization (79 percent), digital etiquette (69 percent), assessment and data use (63 percent), online course development (56 percent), and classroom management or leadership (50 percent; figure 3). In contrast, 25 percent reported participating in training focused on supporting students with special needs. page 6
I would have liked to see some professional development on online pedagogy.  Because they apparently buy most of their courses they have bought  into the pedagogy of the course providers, But it wasn't until I questioned the presenters that I was able to get some information about where the courses came from.  The majority were from "8 major publishers".  When pushed a little more only half were identified.  I'm not sure what the reluctance was to reveal that, but, I suspect that some of the issues teachers are having is a result of the quality of the courses they are teaching from commercial vendors.

In 2007, Niki Davis and I wrote Professional Development for Virtual Schooling and Online Learning for NACOL. The significant difference is that reported 31 percent of teachers who reported their pre-service program prepared them to teach online.  There was very little of that happening in 2007.  I still don't see 31 percent of pre-service programs preparing students to teach online.  But note the latest version of the National  Educational Technology Plan does recommend pre-service education programs include preparation to teach online.

I'd like to hear from pre-service education programs that really do include preparation to teach in an online environment.


* If you don't know about the Regional Educational Laboratories in the US and you are: an educational researcher, teacher education faculty, school administrator, or graduate student in an educational program, you need to learn about them.

Friday, January 22, 2016

CyberLearning 2016

[Update:  The conference was postponed due to the blizzard that struck DC the day before -- when the planning team was scheduled to arrive from the West Coast.  I don't have a new date yet for the re-scheduled event, but I'll leave this up and then see what revisions will be appropriate when the event takes place.]

I'm posting this on Friday January 22.  Sunday, the 24th I'm scheduled to fly to Washington, DC to attend the CyberLearning 2016 conference.  Today and tomorrow, the East Coast, and in particular Washington, DC are supposed to be hit by a major (for them) blizzard.   I'm hoping air travel will be back on track Sunday and the conference will go on as scheduled.  The organizers have put together a website for participants to provide updates on their travel plans.  Since this is a significant gathering of National Science Foundation CyberLearning Principle Investigators the conference planners want this event to be a success.  I'll know more by Sunday.

I'm posting my slides early because I want the participants in my session to be able to have them as we talk.   One of the first things I want to have the brave ones do, is to use one of the accessibility sites on slide 6 to check their project/organizational website.  That should be the start of some interesting discussions.



Monday, January 18, 2016

My Persepctive on: The Center for Innovative Research in CyberLearning

Meet Raymond Rose 

CIRCL perspectives offer a window into the many different worlds of various stakeholders in the cyberlearning community–what drives their work, what they need to be successful, and what they think the community should be doing.

 http://circlcenter.org/meet-raymond-rose/

January 25-26 I'll be at the CyberLearning 2016 conference in Arlington VA. The keynotes will be live streamed, and  you can register for them here.

The slides for my session will be up on this site later this week.