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National Priorities National Priorities Computer-related Priorities 1. Establish computer-based interactive networks for student/ teacher or student/student instruction and dialogue. Computer-based systems are now available to permit deaf students to use a keyboard to interact with the teacher and fellow students within a given class and/or "to participate in" distance learning from another classroom or home. Such systems have numerous applications for instruction in English and other content areas, and considerable untapped potential for the delivery of instruction to deaf learners of all ages and in a variety of settings, including the home. 2. Provide deaf students with greater access to computers and peripherals. Beginning in the early elementary grades, all deaf students should have access to, and be encouraged to use, computers in school. Students should also be encouraged to use the family computer. Software and peripheral equipment such as modems should be available to enable students to apply the technology in pleasurable and meaningful ways. 3- Develop computer literacy among all deaf students. Through a combination of formal instruction and informal time on task, schools should assure that all deaf students become comfortable and competent users of computers. Most students should become capable users of a variety of software packages before they graduate from high school, though level of sophistication will vary from student to student. 4. Establish a clearinghouse for computer software, with a focus on deaf consumers. Beyond the general sources now available, there should be a national resource for current and explicit information about software particularly relevant for deaf students and persons who provide services to deaf children and/or adults. This resource should include "off the shelf," adapted, and specially designed (including teacher-designed) software, all of which meet criteria on substance, format, and evaluation based on use by the special population. 5. Adapt real-time speech to text technologies for use as practical communication and English-enhancing systems for deaf students in mainstream and special educational settings . Several levels of real-time speech to text technology warrant major attention today: computer-aided notetaking, stenographic /computer-aided verbatim speech to text, automatic spoken word recognition, and automatic continuous speech recognition. Each level has its advantages as well as technical and cost constraints. Greater attention needs to be given to adapting, evaluating, and implementing these systems for use by deaf students in a variety of settings. This priority also has implications for deaf and hard of hearing people in employment and other noneducational settings. Television Priorities 1. Establish a clearinghouse for captioned educational video materials. There is a need for a national resource that collects, catalogs, evaluates, and distributes captioned educational video materials to schools serving deaf students. This resource might also assist schools in captioning their own materials or having them captioned commercially. The need for such a resource is particularly great among local school districts providing services to mainstreamed deaf students. 2. Reduce personnel and equipment costs for captioning instructional materials for use in local school settings. The cost of adding captions to existing video materials is a significant deterrent to the extensive use of captioned materials with deaf students both in schools for the deaf and in local schools. A major effort needs to be made nationally to develop ways of enabling schools to add acceptable captions to existing materials quickly, efficiently, and at minimal cost. 3- Establish standards for captioning existing instructional video materials. Greater use of captioned instructional video materials should be encouraged. However, with the expected increase in the use of captioned materials in the education of deaf students comes also the growing need for production standards. These standards should offer constructive guidance to both school-based and commercial producers to assure optimum benefit to deaf students. 4. Develop guidelines for the production and adaptation of TV video materials specifically tailored to the instruction of deaf students. With the possible exception of captioning considerations, very little research has been conducted on the effects of the numerous "special" variables that need to be considered in producing or adapting video materials for the instruction of deaf students . Nor is much known about integrating video effectively with other instructional variables such as didactic teaching and homework assignments. Substantive...

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