Comp 080 Enabling Technology

You’ll find lots of good info at the PBS site including a transcript and discussion guide .

To help guide the discussion, consider these questions:

1. Did your perceptions of deafness change watching this story?

2. What segments did you like best? Feel free to use the transcript to help you remember them.

3. Were you surprised that the deaf students took over the school? That they hotwired the buses?

Feel free to include anything else that interested or challenged you.

Let’s have a polite and intelligent discussion of the controversial video we watched today. I can tell from the groans while we watched it that many of have difficulty relating to the positions of some of the people in the video. Let’s discuss that. Can you think of a way to relate to their feelings?

Those of you who missed class today, must watch it to participate in the discussion. The UG library has 2 copies, linked here .

Postings are due before class on Tuesday.

Let’s discuss the video we watched today. Did you recognize any of the kids from your classes? Did you empathize with any of the participants? How would some of those exercises have made you feel? Share your thoughts.

I posted this so you all can have a place to communicate about forming teams. I probably shouldn’t give out your email addresses. Privacy and all that. So, comment on this post to express interest in forming teams and setting up various ways to communicate.

For this assignment I’d like you to experience writing with 2 switches. Go to the Tar Heel Typer page and you should see something like this:

Now you can use the “z” key to move between letters (and words) and the “x” key to choose. Type a short paragraph of about 50 words this way. It will be incredibly frustrating but stick with it. I suggest you imagine pressing the keys is really hard work. Notice also how hard it is to hold in your mind what you want to say with such a cumbersome input method.
When you’re done, you can copy and paste what you typed using your mouse. Paste it into a comment on this post. Finally, add your comments about the experience after the text you typed with the switches.

Due: 4 September before class.

Comment on this post to discuss the video we watched today. What interested, impressed, or depressed you about the video. With which characters did you identify?