Learning Center

Deaf Women United With the DCMP

Deaf Women United, Inc. was established in 1985. Its goal is to promote the best interests and quality of life of deaf women. One activity is to create opportunities for women to join together in planning, devising, conducting, and participating in various activities and workshops. Further, it functions as a support group, providing networking, leadership, and empowerment opportunities.

Malcolm Joseph Norwood Tribute in CFV Newsletter and Vitae

Dr. Malcolm Norwood, former chief of the Captioning and Adaptation Branch of the Department of Education, died of a heart attack on March 23, 1989. Mac was known throughout the world of deaf education as the "father" of closed captioning. His leadership from the early 1960s when the criteria and technology for 16mm captioning was developed, until the advent of Line 21 captioning for television broadcasting, was invariably enthusiastic, energetic, and innovative. Mac was proof of the adage, "Where there's a will, there's a way." Mac held a Ph.D degree as an educator, but above all he was a loving husband, father, and friend. (Captioned Films/Videos for the Deaf Newsletter, April, 1989.)

Television Decoder Circuitry Act of 1990

Basic information and provisions of the 1990 law requiring built-in decoder circuitry.

How to get to Sesame Street: Multimedia Technology and Second Language Acquisition

"A running joke in this country is that television is as good as a babysitter." While there is bad programming out there, there is very good programming as well. And for ESL students, television can help to teach language, culture, and even reading skills. Students need assistance to develop active viewing habits, so that they not only watch shows but think about them as well. "Television is our most pervasive communication mode. We should not try to compete with it, rather we should harness its power to make it work for us . . ." Also overviews the options of using closed captioning, pointing out that in the early nineties it was estimated that some 40 percent of closed-captioning viewers were people who were learning English as a second language. Written by Katherine Latta, 2003.

Zero to Six: Electronic Media in the Lives of Infants, Toddlers and Preschoolers

Hispanic/Latino Deaf Students in Our Schools

This research publication shares results of national surveys to determine characteristics, ethnicity, and demographics of the Latino/Hispanic deaf population in high schools across the United States. Model projects are reviewed and analyzed for implications and potential future direction. (Published: 2001)

The Case for Real Time Captioning in Classrooms

The inclusion of captions in a classroom dramatically increases a deaf or hard of hearing person's ability to comprehend the speaker. In addition, providing captions to hearing people also seems to enhance verbal comprehension. The increased comprehension for both hearing and deaf students will likely lead to a better learning environment and improved information transfer between the teacher and the students. Author Aaron Steinfeld is a researcher at the National Robotics Engineering Consortium at Carnegie Mellon University. The material from this article is drawn from his 1999 dissertation "The Benefit of Real-Time Captions in a Classroom Environment."

The Effects of Keyword Captions to Authentic French Video on Learner Comprehension

A study by Helen Gant Guillory in 1998. The three different amounts of text used were compared: full text, keywords, and no text. The results of the experiment showed that the keyword captions group outperformed the no-text group and that the full text captions group outperformed the keyword captions group. However, a post-hoc analysis revealed no significant difference between the means of the full text captions group and the keyword captions group. The positive effect of both keyword and full text captions on comprehension, the basic research hypothesis, was confirmed.

National Task Force on Quality of Services in the Postsecondary Education for Deaf and Hard of Hearing

The National Task Force Reports individually and collectively discuss some of the issues identified in the mid-1990s that administrators, faculty and staff, and college students who are deaf or hard of hearing faced. Although some practices may have changed since these reports were published, DCMP is maintaining them to offer an historical perspective. (Published: 1998)

The Use of Television in the Development of Literacy

Considers the implications of the uses of film and television on the teaching of reading. The research, conducted by Bethan Marshall in 1997, looks at the practices of two primary schools in west London. Teachers used the television series "Rat a tat tat," designed to help children read, both by encouraging an enthusiasm for books and stories and by focusing on the mechanics of reading. Comments from teachers include: (1) "The use of television seemed to encourage children to use books. Children were interested in seeing books come to life, and this was motivating and confidence building," (2) ". . . I think that the television series has in some way made the books used even more attractive," and (3) "The series has made me change my expectations of some children because it allows you to watch them and see what they can do. They'll sometimes read things from the screen that you didn't know they could, or they'll come with a different attitude to the books they have seen on the screen."

Listening Skills Development Through Multimedia

As multimedia technology becomes more accessible to teachers and learners of other languages, its potential as a tool to enhance listening skills becomes a practical option. Multimedia allows integration of text, graphics, audio, and motion video in a range of combinations. This paper examines multimodal processing and its implications for listening skills development in a foreign or second language. When multiple forms of input may hypothetically cause interference or cognitive/perceptual overload, studies involving second- and foreign-language students and subtitled video provide strong counterevidence. These combined media, on the contrary, appear to enrich both processing and recall of the target language. Furthermore, including visuals for listening skills development finds support when rates of spoken language and the human ability to process incoming aural information are considered. Research by Carla Meskill, University of Albany, State University of New York in 1996.