ROCHESTER, N.Y., Feb. 3 –
The National Technical Institute for the Deaf at Rochester Institute of
Technology has been awarded a $400,000 grant from the U.S. Department of
Education’s Steppingstones of Technology Innovation for Students with
Disabilities program.
NTID
Researcher Michael Stinson will be leading the two-year project to build
on progress made at NTID over the last several years to create
educational tools to support mainstreamed deaf and hard-of-hearing
students at middle and high school levels.
The main
goal is to develop a new tablet PC-based approach to notetaking, which
will enable students to not only view notes on their own tablet that are
taken by another notetaker whose tablet communicates wirelessly with the
students’, but allow the students to add their own notes, as well.
A second
goal is to develop a method for incorporating use of a tablet with
C-Print, a speech-to-text real-time translation system developed by NTID
and now found in educational settings and business meetings nationwide
that involve people who have hearing loss, visual impairments, or
learning disabilities. The new method will allow a C-Print captionist to
either use a tablet or an external electronic pad to provide graphical
information along with the predominantly text-based real-time display
for students. In addition, students will be able to mark the text of the
real-time display produced by the provider or add notes on their own
tablet.
The
project will also develop online and printed guides for using these
support options and conduct research to determine the potential
usefulness of these tools to support students.
NTID is
the first and largest technological college in the world for deaf and
hard-of-hearing students. One of eight colleges of RIT, NTID offers
educational programs and access and support services to the 1,100 deaf
and hard-of-hearing students from around the world who study, live and
socialize with 14,400 hearing students on RIT’s Rochester, N.Y., campus.
Web address:
www.rit.edu/NTID.
For more
NTID News, visit
www.rit.edu/ntid/newsroom.
