ACS Teaching with Technology Fellowship Application
Using HyperStudio for Content Delivery
Background: Rationale for Overall Project
Birmingham-Southern College's Education Division offers a major in Collaborative Education, K-6, with double certification in Elementary Education, and Special Education to work with children with special needs. A team of the four education faculty members who teach in the program direct and monitor it. Students graduating with this major work in a regular classroom that includes children with special needs, a resource room in a school that offers part-time or full-time assistance to children with special needs, or in a residential setting for children with severe needs.
We are in the process of restructuring and intensifying our program. As a part of our resturcturing efforts, we have combined two reading methods courses together to leave room for a second special education course dealing with teaching methods and techniques. Additionally, we have been delivering information within six methods courses and we are looking for new ways to offer more content and experience about particular special needs. Some of the means we have planned are additional workshops, HyperStudio programs prepared to supplement knowledge, and more use of consultants within and beyond classes.
Description: Part of the Project to Be Done Under ACS Funding
To meet my part of the Collaborative program needs, I would use this Technology Fellowship to support my time to design two HyperStudio comprehensive plans for autism and multiple physical disabilities. These two HyperStudio program stacks would introduce the area of study at the knowledge level. They would precede a field experience in settings for each of these areas of special needs.
Each plan would consist of at least 150 cards in multiple stacks. These projects would need to include feedback loops, activities for deeper understanding, and could be connected to web sites and PowerPoints already available on the topic. Videos of consultants could be worked into Quicktime movies for inclusion. My time would also involve learning more about helping children with autism and multiple physical handicaps.
Each of the stacks would require an estimated 50 to 75 hours to complete. To have sustained time to complete these projects would be luxury not afforded during a regular term.
Timeline: Deliverables/Milestones for ACS Funded Part of Project
These two projects would be created during the summer term with the HyperStudios in place for the fall term.
Technology: Technical Requirements for the Project
All of the computers in the Education Division's Center for Teaching and Technology on our campus already have HyperStudio 4 installed as of this past summer. HyperStudio is taught in the social studies methods course and the senior seminar in technology. The faculty has not yet become frequent users of HyperStudio for teaching purposes. Three of the ten school systems in this county currently require teachers to be competent in HyperStudio.
Other Support: Institutional and/or Outside Support for Project
None required.
Learning Outcomes: How the Project Will Enhance Teaching/Learning
These HyperStudios would serve as models for the education faculty and the students. The desire is for students to become accustomed to using HyperStudio as a learning tool and be more comfortable creating with it and knowing how it fits into a classroom. The future plan would be to use this model to add more HyperStudios in the additional seven areas of special needs we teach.
Curriculum: How the Project Will Be Integrated into the Curriculum
The HyperStudio stacks would each be a part of one course. The information on autism would be used for ED209 Creative Arts. It would be assigned as outside-of-class task. The students would then be working in a school with children diagnosed as autistic and supervised by the special education resource teacher and the professor. The HyperStudio stack on children with multiple physical handicaps would be used in ED320 Mathematics Methods in a similar fashion.
The stronger use of the stacks would be with students who transfer in without this content knowledge or with refreshing students who had the content earlier in their education curricula. The stacks would be available on campus at any time so students may self-remediate.
Assessment: How the Project Will be Evaluated
The faculty member in Special Education who is a member of the collaborative team will serve as evaluator of the content of the stacks. Written feedback on usability, along with activities that will demonstrate student knowledge from use of the stacks, will be delivered to the collaborative team for evaluation of this strategy.
Dissemination: How the Project Will be Shared with ACS Colleagues
The HyperStudio stacks would be available on CD at the requests of an ACS
colleague and would be a part of the report at the end of this project.