AHG15: Accessibility on the Horizon

Welcome Accessing Higher Ground attendees!

Sources referenced in my session, along with some related resources, are listed here. They are also available via the Diigo collaborative bookmarking site: mbfortson’s library tagged AHG15Horizon.

My slides are available here: Accessibility on the Horizon: The NMC Horizon Report: 2015 Higher Education Edition (PPTX). If the presentation file is not accessible to you, please contact me so I can get it to you in a format that is.

Thanks for visiting!


About the NMC Horizon Report: 2015 Higher Education Edition

NMC Horizon Report > 2015 Higher Education Edition
“The NMC Horizon Report > 2015 Higher Education Edition is a collaborative effort between the NMC and the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI). This 12th edition describes annual findings from the NMC Horizon Project, an ongoing research project designed to identify and describe emerging technologies likely to have an impact on learning, teaching, and creative inquiry in education. Six key trends, six significant challenges, and six important developments in educational technology are identified across three adoption horizons over the next one to five years, giving campus leaders and practitioners a valuable guide for strategic technology planning. The report aims to provide these leaders with more in-depth insight into how the trends and challenges are accelerating and impeding the adoption of educational technology, along with their implications for policy, leadership and practice.”

NMC Horizon Report :: 2015 Higher Education Edition (Video)
Original on YouTube
Captioned on Amara
This short video introduces the NMC Horizon Report: 2015 Higher Education Edition.

Important Developments in Educational Technology for Higher Education

Time-to-Adoption Horizon: One Year or Less

Bring Your Own Device (BYOD)

Bring Your Own Device (Video)
Original on YouTube
Captioned on Amara
This short video clip profiles a school district’s BYOD program.

“Bring Your Own Device” and Accessibility | Partnership on Employment & Accessible Technology (PEAT)
“BYOD stands for ‘Bring Your Own Device,’ and it’s an increasingly popular policy and practice in many of today’s workplaces. BYOD offers some accessibility advantages for both employers and technology users-but there are also some unique challenges. Here are some of the questions we’re hearing and some resources from PEAT Networkers to assist you in learning more about BYOD as it relates to improving the availability of accessible technology at work.”

Flipped Classroom

7 Things You Should Know About Flipped Classrooms | EDUCAUSE.edu
“The flipped classroom is a pedagogical model in which the typical lecture and homework elements of a course are reversed. The notion of a flipped classroom draws on such concepts as active learning, student engagement, hybrid course design, and course podcasting. The value of a flipped class is in the repurposing of class time into a workshop where students can inquire about lecture content, test their skills in applying knowledge, and interact with one another in hands-on activities. Although implementing a flipped classroom places different demands on faculty and forces students to adjust their expectations, the model has the potential to bring about a distinctive shift in priorities-from merely covering material to working toward mastery of it.”

What is a flipped classroom? (in 60 seconds) (Video)
Original on YouTube
Captioned on Amara
“In this video, Julie Schell provides a 60 second definition (includes an 11 second intro and a 3 second conclusion) of a flipped classroom, aided by a visual from The Center for Teaching and Learning at The University of Texas at Austin, designed by Josh Walker.”

Time-to-Adoption Horizon: Two to Three Years

Makerspaces

7 Things You Should Know About Makerspaces | EDUCAUSE.edu
“A makerspace is a physical location where people gather to share resources and knowledge, work on projects, network, and build. Makerspaces provide tools and working room in a community environment-a library, community center, private organization, or campus. Many are primarily used for technological experimentation, hardware development, and idea prototyping, but increasingly, self-directed individual inventors and creative teams are using makerspaces to build projects in fields other than engineering and technology. Makerspaces are zones of self-directed learning, providing a physical laboratory for inquiry-based learning and validating the drive for discovery that defines the researcher and the scholar.”

How makerspaces can be accessible to people with disabilities | UW Today
“Inside the University of Washington’s CoMotion MakerSpace, students, faculty and staff use sewing machines to create anime convention costumes, 3-D print models for aeronautics research or make circuits for a custom-built amplifier.

Inspired by the DIY movement, these communal spaces with soldering irons, laser cutters, saws, duct tape, pegboards full of tools, butcher paper, crayons and other “making” tools are popping up across the country. They enable a broader array of people to tinker, create, crochet or prototype whatever invention they can dream up.

To ensure those spaces are truly inclusive, a team of UW researchers has released new guidelines aimed at ensuring makerspaces are accessible to people with disabilities.”

3D Printing For Accessible Education | DIAGRAM Center Community
“Thanks to a 2014 Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian Program grant from the Institute of Museum and LibraryPeople gathered around several tables at the 3D forum. Services (IMLS), Benetech held a three day forum on 3d printing in accessible education from June 17 through June 19, 2015 at the Tech Museum of innovation in San Jose.”

Wearable Technology

7 Things You Should Know About Wearable Technology | EDUCAUSE.edu
“Wearable technologies can gather data-from the body of the wearer or from the environment-or provide information, or both. Wearables represent an evolution in our relationship with computing and hint at a future of ubiquitous connectivity where the furnishings of our everyday life are imbued with sensors, processors, and information displays. Inconspicuous wearable devices could change the landscape of educational computing. Wearable cameras, for instance, allow a learner to engage simultaneously as observer, reporter, and participant. As the things we own and wear acquire sensors, process data, and connect us beyond ourselves, they open new opportunities for us to see further, hear differently, and touch things we have never been able to reach, enabling a new self-awareness and an enhanced perception of the world around us.”

Google Glass – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
“Google Glass was a headset, or optical head-mounted display, that was worn like a pair of eyeglasses. It was developed with the mission of producing a ubiquitous computer. Google Glass displayed information in a smartphone-like hands-free format. Wearers communicated with the Internet via natural language voice commands.”

Smartwatch – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Smartwatches are computerized wristwatches with functionality beyond timekeeping. Effectively wearable computers, smartwatches can perform calculations, run mobile apps, and even function as cameras, GPS devices, and portable media players.

Time-to-Adoption Horizon: Four to Five Years

Adaptive Learning Technologies

7 Things You Should Know About Personalized Learning | EDUCAUSE.edu
“Personalized learning provides a unique, highly focused learning path for each student. Individual attention from instructors isn’t feasible in traditional educational models with large numbers of students, and personalized learning is intended to use IT systems and tools to tailor learning experiences based on student strengths, weaknesses, and pace of learning. Technologies including analytics, adaptive learning, digital courseware, and others underlie personalized learning, which builds a “profile” of each student and makes continual adjustments to learning paths based on student performance. It also provides information to help instructors better target their teaching to individual students.”

Learning Math on Khan Academy (Video)
Original on YouTube
Captioned on Amara
This video explains what it’s like to learn math on Khan Academy and gives an overview of the Khan Academy learning dashboard.

The Internet of Things

7 Things You Should Know About the Internet of Things | EDUCAUSE.edu
“The Internet of Things (IoT) describes a state in which vast numbers of objects are interconnected over the Internet and can collect data and transmit and receive information. The IoT is made possible by low-voltage, low-cost components and sensors that can be added to appliances, streetlights, doorways, desks, cars, e-textbooks, and other objects, all of which send data to a managing application. By interconnecting all kinds of objects and systems, the IoT could open new avenues of research and learning. The increasingly connected network of devices and data streams could coordinate campus physical spaces, integrating information from sensors embedded in objects including library resources, whiteboard writing surfaces, game boards, and robots.”

Keeping Up With… Beacons | Association of College & Research Libraries (ACRL)
A Bluetooth beacon can notify nearby Bluetooth devices, such as smartphones and tablets, of its presence and transmit information─for example, a pop-up notification of information relevant to the area in which the beacon is located.

Internet of Things: New Promises for Persons with Disabilities
“Recent developments in both networks and devices are enabling a much greater range of connected devices and Internet of Things (IoT) functionalities. This paper explores the impact of the IoT on persons with disabilities.”

An inclusive Internet of things: accessibility in the palm of your hand » Simply Accessible
“In the physical world, it is nearly impossible to make a fixed object accessible to everyone. In the connected world of the Internet of Things, digital brings us accessibility where the physical can’t.”

The Digital Divide

Two questions guided our examination of these six technologies: what is the technology’s potential to enhance accessibility and learning for students with disabilities, and what is the technology’s potential to diminish accessibility and learning for students with disabilities? All of these technologies have the potential to diminish accessibility because of a digital divide between those who have the technologies and those who don’t. The following resources address The Digital Divide.

7 Things You Should Read About Digital Divides and Today’s Technologies | EDUCAUSE.edu
“The penetration of information technology into all corners of life created a digital divide between those who had those technologies and those who didn’t. As technology ownership has broadened, the divides have morphed but not disappeared, a dynamic seen in many higher education settings. As learning environments in higher education increasingly use and depend on an expanding array of technologies, colleges and universities should pay close attention to how those developments can present new obstacles to some learners.”

Digital Divide | Pew Research Center
Reports and data from the Pew Research Center.

Disability in the Digital Age
“Individuals who identified a disability use the internet at lower rates than those who did not report disabilities… By delving deeper into the demographic data, we now present a more detailed look at adults living with disabilities and their interplay with the internet.”

Americans living with disability and their technology profile | Pew Research Center
Findings from a 2010 Pew Research Center survey indicate that “Americans living with a disability are less likely than other adults to use the internet” and “once they are online, are also less likely than other internet users to have high-speed access or wireless access.”