News Story

Vote for ERA!

Mark Gaved, Tuesday 30 September 2008 | Annotate

The Enabling Remote Activity project has been shortlisted for an award at the Handheld Learning 2008 conference. ERA is a finalist in the 'Special Needs - Innovation' category for developing a system to support mobility impaired students participating in the OU 'Ancient Mountains' geology fieldwork course. You can help us win - the winner is decided by the number of votes each finalist gets via SMS text voting. To vote for ERA: Txt ERA to : 0778 620 3140. (Deadline: midnight, 09 October 2008) ERA is a collaboration between KMi, Earth and Environmental Sciences, and the Disability Resources Team. ERA provides opportunities for mobility impaired students to fully participate in fieldwork learning activities. Students with such disabilities can attend residential field trips and vicariously experience fieldwork at inaccessible field locations by working remotely with a field geologist over a rapidly deployable local wireless network. We've just returned from supporting two students on the 'Ancient Mountains' course run in August in Kindrogan Field Studies Centre, Perthshire. Details of the teaching approach, outcomes and technology used are available through the project wiki. The ERA project offers: * Inclusive fieldwork teaching for students with mobility difficulties. * An innovative, flexible, low-cost communications network for enabling remote activities. * Guidelines and support for other institutions to adopt and develop similar accessibility solutions for themselves.

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