Our Education Manager, Anne McGrath also works as an Itinerant Teacher of the Deaf with the Catholic Education Office, Sydney. McGrath was awarded the 2014 Premier's IOOF Centre for Educational and Medical Research Itinerant Support Teacher (Hearing) Scholarship by the Premier, Mike Baird, and the NSW Minister for Education, Adrian Piccoli.
CAP THAT! is an initiative of Media Access Australia with a dedicated website developed to raise awareness nationally of the need for teachers to turn on captions in the classroom.
Media Access Australia maintains a database of audio described DVDs. The DVDs listed on the database are entertainment DVDs, but some may have relevance to the classroom.
Teachers work with a diverse range of student needs, learning styles and a curriculum that presumes the use of audiovisual/multimedia content.
It is vital that teachers who have students who are Deaf or have hearing impairment in their classrooms create an equitable educational environment through the use of inclusive teaching practices.
There are a significant number of national and state-based organisations and websites that offer support services and information for parents, teachers and students.
Australian Hearing caters for people of all ages through a national network of hearing centres; including more than 110 permanently staffed centres, with 330 other locations in urban, rural and remote areas of Australia.
Having trouble finding captioned content?
If there is educational audiovisual content that you wish to use with students but you can’t find a captioned version, perhaps you could try:
The following practices are effective in all classrooms and assist students by providing information in a supportive and supplementary way:
Students who are Deaf or have hearing impairment have difficulty hearing speech in background noise, over distances, and through AV equipment.
All students need a sufficiently quiet environment to listen and to make any meaning from the content. The following listening skills are important:
Beyond access to the soundtrack for students with hearing impairment, captions can provide focus, word association and increased comprehension skills for a wide range of students. The benefits of captions on educational videos, presented in a variety of research, signifies that switching them on provides a comprehensive method of learning.
Some stories about Google Glass help to explain the technology’s potential. Google Glass appears to provide an opportunity for consumers to access and engage in leisure and learning opportunities without significant access barriers. Telstra have been involved in a trial with b2cloud of prototype apps to support those with hearing or vision loss for use with Google Glass.
