Chapter 30: Microcomputers in the Service of Students and Teachers—Computer-Assisted Instruction at the California School for the Deaf: An Update

The California School for the Deaf, Berkeley has established a Regional Center for promoting Computer-Assisted Instruction for deaf students in the San Francisco Bay Area. At the heart of the Center's program is the belief that educational software should be developed at the local level by the teachers who will use it.

To achieve this development, professional programmers are employed who write a set of programs, called an authoring system, to allow teachers to write lessons into the computer. With this system, even teachers who have had very little training on the computer are able to develop computerized lessons using text and graphics. The system has proven to be a powerful tool in the hands of teachers, giving them control over computerized lessons developed for their students.

Lessons created in this way are categorized and stored in a lesson library to which all teachers have access. This lesson library promotes sharing of lessons and ideas among the teachers.

Along with software development and the lesson library, the Center also provides a graphics library. Inservice training to all teachers is another key component of the Center's program.

The software created by this project may be available for dissemination on a limited basis by October 1980.