ADCET Webinar: The Internet of Things: Implications for Students with Disabilities
Event Details
Online webinar
31 May 2018 3:00 am
The Australian Disability Clearinghouse on Education and Training (ADCET) and the Australian Tertiary Education Network on Disability (ATEND) look forward to bringing you this webinar on Thursday 31 May.
Leanne McRae, Katie Ellis and Mike Kent (Curtin University) will present on their recently released report The Internet of Things: Implications for Students with Disabilities. The report, published by the NCSEHE and funded by Curtin University, provides an insight into both the potential risks and benefits of the Internet of Things (IoT) for tertiary students with disabilities, particularly in the current university climate where this cohort utilise mobile devices as a key resource in their learning.
The Internet of Things (IoT) is often described with much excitement as the next evolution in internet technology where machines become increasingly autonomous and talk to each other without the intervention of humans. For education, there is the potential to improve access, tailoring and delivery of materials to students as well as managing administration (attendance, for example), and assessment. These possibilities are particularly exciting for students with disabilities who may encounter a number of environment as well as interpersonal barriers to accessing education.
Key project objectives of the project were to:
- assess the educational benefits of current and emerging IoT products
- assess the benefits and risks of IoT within a single-interface, app-based interface and whole-of-ecosystem IoT classroom solution by competing providers
- determine the relevance and implications of IoT as it relates to the educational needs of people with disabilities
- undertake interviews with currently enrolled students with disabilities to identify the practical needs of this cohort in an educational context
- provide recommendations and strategic guidance on appropriate IoT solutions with policy recommendations for Curtin University, the tertiary education sector and industry.
The webinar is free to attend, it will be live captioned and recorded. The captioned video will then be made available on the ADCET website.
Audience: This webinar will be of interest to educators, disability support workers and students with disability.
Presenters
Leanne McRae is a research officer in the internet studies program at Curtin University, Western Australia. Her current research interests revolve around disability, digitisation and education, with a special interest in the Internet of Things. Recent publications have focused on MOOCs, physical cultural studies and social media in education.
Katie Ellis is Associate Professor and Senior Research Fellow in Internet Studies at Curtin University, Western Australia. She holds an Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Early Career Research award for a project on disability and digital televisions and is series editor of Routledge Research in Disability and Media Studies. Her current projects include co-editing The Routledge Companion to Disability and Media (2019) with Gerard Goggin and Beth Haller, and Manifestos for the Future of Critical Disability Studies (Routledge, 2019) with Rosemarie Garland Thomson, Mike Kent and Rachel Robertson.
Mike Kent is Associate Professor and Head of School of Media Creative Arts and Social Inquiry at Curtin University, Western Australia. His recent publications include Disability and Social Media: Global Perspectives with Katie Ellis (Routledge, 2017), Massive Open Online Courses and Higher Education, What Went Right, What Went Wrong and Where to Next? with Rebecca Bennett (Routledge, 2017), and Chinese Social Media: Social, Cultural, and Political Implications with Katie Ellis and Jian Xu (Routledge, 2018). His forthcoming books – Manifestos for the Future of Critical Disability Studies and Interdisciplinary Approaches to Disability: Looking Towards the Future are both edited with Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, Katie Ellis and Rachel Robertson and will be available, again through Routledge, in 2019.