Program Details
Sarah Horton
Instructional Technologist, Dartmouth College
Access Great and Small
When we are able to confront a task, succeed, and advance with confidence to the next task, we are experiencing the benefits of access. In education, access to lectures, readings, discussions, and course content enables us in accomplishing the task of learning.
But what happens when these resources are not accessible? When experts are unavailable for questioning? Or lectures are missed or somehow indecipherable? What happens when course content is exclusively in the hands of the instructor?
Without access to these essentials, our success is compromised, as is our ability to advance to meet new learning challenges. Fortunately, today's technologies offer opportunities to provide unprecedented access to educational resources. From email to course web sites to recorded lectures to virtual environments, technology lets us bring the "stuff" of learning close at hand, and in different modalities, so that more learning happens, and for more of us. In this talk we will look at how access influences life, the universe, and everything, with a special focus on how access enables learning, and how technology enables access.
About Sarah Horton
Sarah Horton is a Web developer with Academic Computing at Dartmouth College, where she helps faculty incorporate technology into their teaching. Together with Patrick Lynch she authored the best-selling Web Style Guide, currently in its second edition. Her second book, Web Teaching Guide, was the 2000 winner of the American Association of Publishers Award for the Best Book in Computer Science. Her latest book, Access by Design: A Guide to Universal Usability for Web Designers, was published in July 2005 by Peachpit Press