How does a blind music student complete music assignments involving written music scores? With a team of dedicated and persistent faculty and disability counselors, a student worker, two software programs and a Braille printer.

When Alex Krauth started her freshman year at Keene State in September 2009 it wasn’t clear how to help her get her music assignments into  a format that she could work with. “We hadn’t ever accommodated this need,” said Jane Warner, Director of Disability Services, “but we were confident we could do it.  We purchased the music editing program Sibelius, and Dancing Dots, which converts music notation to Braille, and dove in.”

“Working with the Music department  and professor Heather Gilligian, we created a process that involves translating the score into Braille and printing out a Braille copy. Then Alex works with a student worker to make changes to the score and sends the product back to the professor.”

Seeing Alex and student worker Lisa Henkel working together recently, disability counselor Wayne Harvey realized that they had created something special. “We need to capture this,” he thought. He asked the Center for Engagement Learning & Teaching (CELT) for some advice.

After explaining the capabilities and limitation of screen capture software, it became clear that Wayne needed to shoot some video of people.  “We lent him a Flip cam and he was off,” said Judy Brophy, Academic Technology, CELT.  “Wayne had the process clear in his mind and he went about documenting it. Then we met and I helped him edit it into a short presentation.”  The video was shown to the University System Board of Trustees on April 29 and was well received.

Wayne was so intrigued with the Flip Cam he bought one for himself.  He plans to do more videos illustrating the services available to students who require some kind of accommodation.

Post by Matthew Ragan - -

As I mentioned in the “YouTube is my Homework?!” presentation on 1/14/10,  there are tremendous resources available on the net for video. These have great potential both in and out of the classroom, but the hard part becomes finding and distributing these pieces of media. Finding something relevant can be as easy and simple as a Google search, or it may take some more time to find the piece of media that illustrates your point (or counterpoint). To help you along in the process of finding some of the good stuff, here are a few places to start the search:

NASA
http://www.nasa.gov/

National Geographic
http://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/index.html

The Internet Archive
http://www.archive.org/index.php

PBS
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/programs/index.html

The Discovery Channel
http://dsc.discovery.com/videos/

TED
http://www.ted.com/

Teacher Tube
http://www.teachertube.com/

Calculus on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/user/patrickJMT#g/c/58C7BA6C14FD8F48

Research Channel
http://researchchannel.org/prog/

YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/edu

The Smithsonian
http://www.smithsonianchannel.com/site/smithsonian/video/

Book Videos
Interviews with Authors
http://www.bookvideos.tv/

National Archives
http://video.google.com/nara.html

Teacher’s TV
http://www.teachers.tv/video

University of California Television
http://www.uctv.tv/

Academic Earth
Courses from Yale, Columbia, UCLA, and MIT
http://www.academicearth.org/

Video Lectures
http://videolectures.net/

Harvard at Home
http://athome.harvard.edu/

Open Courses at Yale
http://oyc.yale.edu/

Georgetown University
http://webcast.georgetown.edu/

Cornell University
http://www.cornell.edu/video/

What are the roles and responsibilities for those who hope to embody the ideal of global citizenship? Professors Jo Beth Mullens (Geography) and Pru Cuper (Education) co-taught a 17-day field course to the Sacred Valley in the high Andes of Peru, where 10 students in KSC’s Honors Program engaged in group service learning and individual research related to their personal interests and major fields of study.

From the course syllabus:

“Designed to immerse you in Peru’s culture and environment, this course offers an opportunity to engage in international research and hands-on service learning projects which focus on health and environmental problems facing rural Peruvians, particularly those living in the Andes Mountains.  Readings, discussions and reflective writing assignments will occur both on campus and in Peru and will focus on investigating the roles and responsibilities of those who hope to embody the ideal of global citizenship. Within this critical investigation, we will explore the distinction between the perceived and the actual needs of others—what the visitor/”helper” determines necessary vs. what the host/”recipient” may want.  Through this critical lens, we will examine America’s role as a world leader, including a comparison of values in the U.S. and Peru, and the pros and cons of bringing change to a culture much older and very different one’s own.“

Portable technology:
Through the use of video, MP3 interviews, photos, and Twitter, students were able to digitally capture their immersion into the Peruvian culture. Periodic “tweets” (140 character updates also know as ‘microblogging’) kept parents and other interested parties up to date on the various daily activities and provided an archive that students can later refer to such as this gem:

“Today, there is a strike in town. The roads are blocked with large stones, children are out of school and a peaceful protest is underway.”

The archive of tweets and the end-of-course reflection questions helped students to analyze their assumptions about “place” and how those assumptions are shaped by culture.  In this 21 minute video students’ respond to questions that challenges them to assess their knowledge, values, and skills and how they may have changed because of their time in Peru.

There is such an abundance of resources on the web that could be used to supplement courses that I thought the start of a new semester would be an ideal time to post the link to one of the richest video repositories on the web.  Technology, Entertainment, Design, (TED), http://www.ted.com features videos from leading thinkers in the science, education, business, technology, entertainment and other fields. Talks are organized by topics and include Larry Lessig ( on laws that choke creativity), Arthur Ganson (on kinetic art that explores deep philosophical ideas), Seth Godin (on marketing Ideas in the digital age), and Isabel Allende (on women, creativity, the definition of feminism and passion).

So when you have a minute or two poke around the site. You won’t be disappointed!

From TED:

We believe passionately in the power of ideas to change attitudes, lives and ultimately, the world. So we’re building here a clearinghouse that offers free knowledge and inspiration from the world’s most inspired thinkers, and also a community of curious souls to engage with ideas and each other.

Sample Video: “Evan Williams: How Twitter’s spectacular growth is being driven by unexpected uses”.
From: TED: Ideas Worth Spreading