From: leigh@unibase.unibase.sk.ca (Leigh Calnek)
Newsgroups: misc.handicap
Subject: Special Education Conferences
Date: 19 Aug 92 04:29:21 GMT
Reply-To: leigh@unibase.unibase.sk.ca (Leigh Calnek)

Index Number: 23951

[Note from Bill McGarry: forwarded to me from Patt Bromberger.]

Patt....I am planning to host a number of real-time
interactive conferences this year, and one of the topic sets
I am looking at is special education.

The real-time conferences will be delivered through unichat,
some software that we have developed for network wide
intereactive conferencing.  It permits an unlimited number
of users at a single site to join in an interactive
conference with users at other sites which are running
unichat.  Conference participants can be subdivided into
smaller groups, and can hold smaller, multi-member
discussions, again with participants from anywhere across
the network.  If you are familiar with IRC, this works in a
similar manner, but we think has a smoother user interface.
I liken it to a large conference hotel that can accomodate
an unlimited number of users in an unlimited number of
separate discussion areas/rooms.

As UNIBASE is accessible through the Internet, I feel that
we can invite presentations from a wide range of expertise
across North America.

The target audience is teachers at the K-12 level here in
Saskatchewan, and specifically, teachers who are in schools
which are either on uniNET (my educational network), or
those who have access to UNIBASE, the main uniNET host.
Currently, UNIBASE may be accessed via Datareach (a
Saskatchewan communications netowork), Datapac (a Canadian
communications network) or as I have indicated, Internet.
There are currently 8 schools, 1 library and 3 smaller
education counsellors that have full networking access to
uniNET.  Collectively, we have a capacity to bring around 70
users off uniNET together for interactive conferencing.  In
addition, we should be able to handle between 15 an 20 users
from the other networks (Datareach and Datapac) and another
10 to 12 from the Internet (one our link between unichat and
IRC is complete, the number from the Internet will be much
larger.

As you can see, there is a potential for as many as
100 participants to be brought together for conferencing on
a particular topic.  I do not expect that many to
participate in the special education discussions, however I
do think we could expect to find 20+ participants at the
initial conferences, and the number could grow depending
upon how successful we are in establishing a viable venue
for meaningful participation.

The current planned venue is to identify a topic for
discussion, and run the conference ove a 2 -3 week period.
The conference would be introduced by an interactive session
with all participants invited.  A short "presentation" would
be made by someone with "expertise" in the topic area,
followed by participants joinging smaller discussion groups.
In the small groups, participants would explore and identify
a number of discussion threads they would like to see
pursued over the following weeks.

Following the interactive session, the participants would
pursue these topics/threads using non-interactive
conferencing (computer mediated communication) for the next
several weeks.  We would use our own cmc software for this.
It distributes postings to all uniNET hosts (we use Usenet
News for distribution).  In addition, participants not on
uniNET would be able to receive the discussions using our
listserv software.

I would expect the cmc part of the conference to run over
two to three weeks.  It would be followed at by hosting a
second interactive session which would be used for winding
down.  At that time, short submissions could be made to the
sub-groups, and also to a plenary.

The final task would be to have all verbage, from both
intereactive sessions and the cmc sessions edited, and
brought together in an edited form of a "Conference
Procedings" book.  This would be available to participants
and others who were interested in the topic.

I have described the plan for you at some length, and would
be interested in a number of comments from you.  What do you
think of the idea?  What concerns do you see (logistics
etc)?  Would you be interested in participating?  Do you
know someone who would be a potential keynote/resource
person for this kind of conference?  Are there some topics
which you feel would be good ones for addressing in this
manner?

I would appreciate any thoughts you would have on this, and
look forward to hearing from you.

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