This paper undertakes an analysis of the "smart school" as a building that both senses and manages bodies through sensory data. The authors argue that smart schools produce a situation of ubiquitous sensation in which learning environments are continuously sensed, regulated, and controlled through complex sensory ecosystems and data…

The promise of novel technological strategies and solutions to assist persons with visual impairments (that is, those who are blind or have low vision) is frequently discussed and held to be widely beneficial in countless applications and daily activities. One such approach involving a tactile-vision sensory substitution modality as a mechanism to…

This randomized controlled trial examined the impacts of "Same-Language-Subtitling" ("SLS"), a karaoke-style subtitling intervention, on the reading comprehension skills of secondary school students in Kaneohe, Hawaii. Researchers randomly assigned 198 secondary school students with learning disabilities (ages 14 to 19) to…

Diagram describing texts are integral part of science and engineering subjects including geometry, physics, engineering drawing, etc. In order to understand such text, one, at first, tries to draw or perceive the underlying diagram. For perception of the blind students such diagrams need to be drawn in some non-visual accessible form like tactile…

Through integration of geology, biology, chemistry, and the history of science, the historic Krakatoa eruption offers a unique portal for student inquiry in the classroom. Students are inherently fascinated by natural disasters, and modern comparisons to the Krakatoa cataclysm are as close as the day's news. This article uses the historic Krakatoa…

Prelinguistic vocal development is "the process by which infants and toddlers produce increasingly more complex, phonetically diverse, and speech-like utterances before they say words on a regular basis" (Ertmer, 2005, p. 85). Research has shown that children with bilateral, moderate-to-profound hearing loss experience delays and deficits in vocal…

In order to investigate the effect of concurrent phoning and auditory environmental monitoring, the performance of visually impaired people was observed on a dual task that consisted of two simulation tasks. Subjects wore either a bone conducting headset, or closed or open (air conduction) earphones. Reaction times and the correctness of responses…

This article presents a survey of the demographical, educational and visual functional characteristics of children attending a specialist paediatric low-vision assessment clinic at Manchester Royal Eye Hospital. Comprehensive data were collected retrospectively from children attending the paediatric low-vision clinic between January 2003 and…

A vibrotactile N-back task was used to generate cognitive load while participants were guided along virtual paths without vision. As participants stepped in place, they moved along a virtual path of linear segments. Information was provided en route about the direction of the next turning point, by spatial language ("left," "right," or "straight")…

The study assessed the effects of near-verbatim captioning versus edited captioning on a comprehension task performed by 15 children, ages 7-11 years, who were deaf or hard of hearing. The children's animated television series "Arthur" was chosen as the content for the study. The researchers began the data collection procedure by asking…

A blind infant used the Canterbury Child's Aid (a binaural spatial sensor) for such purposes as reaching, feeding, and walking. As a preschooler, she used it to explore novel environments and avoid objects in her path. Training increased her responsiveness to and action upon the environment. (CL)

An evaluation of five voice calculators now on the market--the Canon SP-1260-D, Panasonic JE-165OU and JE-72OU, Sharp EL-620, and Speech Plus--by 20 legally blind adults indicated that most can easily by used by visually handicapped people. Descriptive information is given. (Author/MC)

This investigation sought to answer two questions: (1) Do children who receive cochlear implants (CIs) by 3;0 (years; months) improve speech intelligibility significantly during their third year of cochlear implant use? (2) How do the intelligibility scores of young CI recipients compare to those reported in the literature for children who receive…

Modeled after Project PAVE (Corn et al., 2003) in Tennessee, Project Magnify is designed to test the idea that students with low vision who use individually prescribed magnification devices for reading will perform as well as or better than students with low vision who use large-print reading materials. Sixteen students with low vision were…

The report describes a project designed to test the feasibility of adapting off-the-shelf educational software to a speech synthesizer compatible with Apple personal computers for visually impaired students. Fifteen visually impaired children were administered pretests and posttests for auditory discrimination, computer literacy, keyboard…