Project CBCN:Computer-based Collaborative Notetaking

Bo Adan, Center for Electronic Study, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR

>> My name is Bo Adan, and I am on the faculty at the University of Oregon. We do research in -- there are institutes within institutes. Pockets within pockets. And we are federally funded to do work with various special needs and at-risk populations, so some of our work includes a migrant education grant. There is a five-year project to work with secondary school students, who are in the migrant ed population. We have recently done research with learning disabled and hearing impaired and upper mobility dysfunction in the secondary schools.

And this current grant, which is federally funded by the office of special education programs, does work with post-secondary community colleges, and transition to four-year institutions with the hearing impairment population, and what we are doing, I think, it is really nice, I originally Cheryl had scheduled me to make this presentation, I think it was at 9:00 this morning, and a couple of weeks ago she called and said, can you do it later in the afternoon. This is right about the time I want to take a nap, so that wasn't my first choice. But, in terms of the pedagogy in terms of what we have been doing today, this really flows well from what we have been talking about. The assistive listening and learning devices that were talked about in the full-day workshop yesterday, and in this morning's workshop. Not the first one, but the one before lunch, with Terri Goldstein, and talking about college choice, and student access.

So, I think that, what I want to do is I want to make this presentation to you because I worked so hard on it, but really, I want to open it up and have a discussion with you all. I want to demonstrate the technology that we use in the post-secondary education setting, and, and then get some feedback from you and see how it is you can see yourself using this technology, what impediments it might provide because as you saw yesterday, there is this wonderful technology out here, but once you set it up, sometimes there are problems. And what kinds of problems, as well as successes, so you think you might encounter using some of the technologies we saw yesterday, as well as something that we -- that I will show you today. Because, clearly, the technology is always up and coming and improving, but it still has a long way to go in some areas, if we want to make this facile, in other words, we want to make this as easy to use for our students and service providers in the classroom. So, let me step out of my own way here.

So, the current research that we are doing feeds off of an earlier project. It was called Project Connect. We were working in the secondary schools with learning disabled and hearing impaired populations to provide in-class network note taking, which means that we were going into the schools. We were, both training and ourselves, conducting network note taking, network note taking simply means, as a term of art, that we are doing wireless note taking. It is simultaneous. It is collaborative, and it allows for both the student and the service provider, whether that be an interpreter or, or a staff person or a hired note taker, to take notes simultaneously with a student, as we talk about this more today, you will see that for various -- for the various populations there is greater or lesser degrees of simultaneousness, so with a student who is profoundly deaf, that student may be using the notes as a resource, but is not collaborating as much because that student will be looking at the interpreter. Students who have mild hearing impairments, will be doing much more collaboration with the note taker in class. So, the -- so, this system is, is facile in the sense it allows for various uses.

The CBCN part of this project stands for computer-based collaborative note taking. The computer-based is what I will demonstrate for you in several minutes. The collaborative is what I have alluded to. It allows for both note taker and student to work together to develop notes and note taking strategies in class. And then the note taking is exactly that. We also do work with students outside of class, and in talking about study skills and study strategies but that's a different component than what I am going to be talking about today. What we are doing, in this project, in the earlier research, we were working, we were working in the classroom. We were working with resource room folks. We were working with, with Voc Rehab. We were working with regional programs, particularly in our program, which was localized in Lane. We were working in Lane and South Lane, so we were the secondary, then the middle and the high schools there, but primarily there, we were going in, rather than training other people to do the work, we would go in and do the work, show people was we were doing, and we would also have them help us.

What we didn't like about that is that once that grant was done the work was done. The project was done, and there wasn't a way to continue this effort. And so we wrote a second grant that would work with, so that we could talk to high school students who were going to be going into college but then be in the colleges and talk with the disability services, staff with voc rehab, outside of the schools who are service providers, and to try to train them to do some of this work, and teach them, so train the trainers, in other words, so that this work would carry on after the life of this grant, because we are in -- this is a -- there particular grant is four years in duration, and we are nearing the end of the second year. And we are spreading ourselves very thin. At this point, we are in a few community colleges in Oregon, we are going -- we are now expanding into other community colleges in the western United States. That's as far as we can go, and as the project coordinator on the grant, that's faster I can go without literally splitting into lots of pieces. So, we are working with college disability services staff to provide that academic support system. We are supporting the hearing impaired students in class. This is in their regular education classrooms, so we are going in, like, like you saw yesterday, I am sorry, was it Patti?

>> Pat.

>> Pat, excuse me, as Pat was talking about, there are several note taking systems. There is CART and CAN and C-Print. There are varying costs, and other issues associated with providing any of these services. Likewise, with this service, this service tends to be less expensive than the other ones, but there are always costs and benefits to each of them. So, my point in presenting this information to you, just in a brief hour today, is to encourage some of you who might be interested in seeing how this might work on any of the college campuses that you are either teaching at or where you, or where you are coordinating with, maybe what we could do is come out and do a presentation, but there are a lot of different things out there that are very valuable, and so it is not really that one -- one is better than the other. Using as many of these technologies as are available, I think, is probably the best strategy.

And what we are doing is we are supporting them in class. We are training note takers and students, were use Mac laptops in this case to take notes from lecture and discussion. What's really nice about there is that with the, the laptop computers in the classroom, what you can also do is when the lights go down, and there are video presentations, you can still be taking notes, obviously, because with the, the back lighting on the computer, you can still see what you are doing. In class, you can take notes, it also, because of the portability, you can also move from desk-to-desk, so that if you need to -- a lot of times, you will have projects in class. This was especially true when we were in the secondary schools. It is also true in the, in the general education classes, in, for undergraduates, in writing classes, for example, or labs, in biology, that you are working in small groups, and when you do that, the portability allows you to move with the student rather than, than bring everybody into a corner somewhere of a room. So, that's a nice advantage of this technology.

This moves slowly. Some of the places we have worked, include Lane Community College, Chemeketa Community College, we are trying to set it up at Portland Community College. Clark Hochstetler, the director of disability services there wanted to start this up in the past year but was on sabbatical for the entire year, so we are waiting until he gets back to make some moves there. There has been some interest expressed, I can't remember the name, it is a community college in Oakland but it is not called Oakland Community College. Oakland, California, not Oakland, Oregon. And at -- I have talked to some folks here this week, in fact, from southern Idaho, who are interested in implementing this, and from Utah State College, as well.

This is a community college disability services interpreter. If you have all got the handout, you can follow along or follow with the interpreter. I have captioned what she has to say in each of these slides so you can read along here. She's been working in our project now. She worked with us in our previous research, so actually --

>> Some people need the handout.

[video shown]

>> Oh, we have got -- they are up here. She was actually with us in our previous research in project connect, so had worked with students who were transitioning into LCC, from high school at the time. What has been really neat about having done this work for several years now, is that we just got a call from her a couple of weeks ago saying, oh, so and so is going to be graduating from high school, and wants to be in this program, what do you think and what you want to come out and meet with us, and I said, oh, yeah, we worked with him in 7th grade science, so all of a sudden we have students more familiar with the technology than even some of the disability services staff because, except in Cathy's case, because she's been with us all along, but this kid has been using this on and off now for five years. So, he's, he's ready. He's ready to -- he's ready to take this into school.

We have another who is going to be going to the university -- this is at Lane Community College. Another student who is going to be attending in the fall, the University of Oregon, same situation. And he's going to be majoring in, in chemistry and physics, and we are still trying to think about wow, note takers for chemistry and physics, that will be the next challenge but the technology is up to the task. Let us hope. All right then.

>> The instructor specifically said they don't know how to work with students with hearing impairments. They don't have that experience. And they don't think about the simple, every day things that we totally rely on our hearing for. So, having an instructor in the classroom writing notes on the board and continuing to lecture to the blackboard while they are making notes is information that these hearing impaired students generally miss out on, especially if they don't have any additional accommodations.

>> So, what -- these are some of the issues we have been talking about in the last day or so, is that we have got -- there are people working with Vocational Rehabilitation. There are people who are working on disability services. There are people who are working on service -- as service providers in other ways that are familiar with these issues. And the instructors, when you walk into the classroom, as a hearing impaired student or a learning disabled student or students who has a need for an accommodation, it is not -- we did hear from, from, from Martha this morning that sometimes, you walk into -- a student will walk in, and know that they want an accommodation, and need an accommodation, but meet reluctance or stubbornness from an instructor, and that's true, but we also have instructors who are incredibly well meaning, who would bend over backwards to do anything and everything that they can. They simply don't have the expertise for working with an accommodating student, and this is what Cathy was speaking to.

So you will have a teacher who will be talking to you like this. As they are writing on the board, and they have no idea that you are missing out. And it is not because they are insensitive. It is not because they are unkind. It is not because they don't know what they are doing as teachers. They simply don't know how to meet this special need. And so our project, as well as to work with the student is to help educate the educators, as we are all trying to do.

I have a friend who is a Ph.D. years ago in geology, and she and her fiancee went to California to meet her -- his parents. And they were, I don't know what had happened, there was maybe, maybe a tremor that had been happening in California at the time, and the, the parents asked Judy, do you think the soon to be daughter-in-law, well, do you think we should get earthquake insurance? And without missing a beat, without hesitating, she said well, yes, of course. And even though they had asked her, they really wanted to hear a safe answer. They wanted to hear no. Because once she said yes, then she had to convince them, even though she felt no need to have to convince them, but she had to convince them, and even still they weren't into it. And she says, well how can you be so sure, and she said, well that's what I do. See. For her, having studied tectonic plates all her graduate school life, she knows, she understands the need. She's keen on that and sensitized to it, in a way that we working with deaf and hard of hearing population are more sensitive and sensitized to, to the needs of this population.

Whereas, the regular education instructor who, if that person is, is not deaf or hard of hearing, or is not married to someone who is deaf or hard of hearing, as we have talked about, or has a child who is deaf or hard of hearing, doesn't have that exposure on a day-to-day basis, and so forgets or never knew how to accommodate and meet the needs of those students. So, I think what Cathy is saying here is really incredibly important, is that there is -- she's not saying that there is anything wrong with these instructors. They simply don't know.

So, what networked note taking is doing with these students in the classroom is, is we are working with, with students who have enrolled in their regular education classrooms. That sounds almost trite, but it is important to note because the point is, to be with these students where they need the assistance. And they need the assistance in their regular education classrooms. This is not remediation. It is compensation. It is how do we say, what are you doing here. What you are doing is, you are trying to, to pass your biology class. You are trying to pass your English class. You are trying to learn something. You are trying to hear something. Well, where are we going to help you? Not, with tutoring outside of the classroom, we want to be inside the classroom and doing note taking with you. Where are you needed? Which is then and there.

So, they need that in-class support for equitable access to information, and we have an assumption, as we are working with them, that they want to improve their language acquisition, reading and study skills, and some students don't. And that's important to know because sometimes, my ego gets in the way because boy, I think this is so great and I want it to help anyone and everyone it can, but there are students who don't want the assistance, and you have to be open to knowing that they may not want this type or that type of assistance. The students, some of the students we worked with at Chemeketa Community College in Salem for those of you, I don't know how many of you here are from Oregon or not, those students are almost exclusively coming from OSD, Oregon School for the Deaf. Those students' primary and almost exclusive form of communication is ASL. That's how those students want to receive services in a classroom. And they don't want the note taking. And that -- some of them were really happy to have it, and into it, into the, the nice technology, as much as anything else, but some really didn't want that, as either a form of access or communication.

And so we had to, to take a step back and say, okay. We understand that. And this isn't for everybody. This is for students who want it, not -- it is not something that you, you know, like a parent, say you will have this because it is good for you. It is, working with those students and various students to see who this best serves. So, and, and I should add, one more thing, this may or may not be to the student's benefit, but again, we are not their parents. And so we have to decide, you know, we have to decide what our role is in, in advocating with them and having them advocate for themselves. Because we have had students who said that they don't want this, and there is one in particular that comes to mind. He was going there for about six months. He didn't want it any more, and we said sure, no problem. Fine. And we started working with another student because we have limited technology -- numbers of computers. And three months later he came back to us and said, you know what? That was the biggest mistake I ever made. How can I get back in, and we said, sure, fine, you know. We had to wait until another pair of computers were freed up, but then we were ready to work with him again.

Some students, though, like I said, with Chemeketa, they don't want it, and I am not sure -- I mean, I am sure that that is not to their benefit because in one particular case, a woman was taking two English classes, a history class, and a biology class. And yeah, the biology, too. All four of those classes were text-heavy.

She had a lot of reading to do. And yet, her reading skills were not very good, and we talked with her about how this note-taking service, to the degree that she used it or didn't use it, it can still benefit her because if she had the notes to refer to, after receiving ASL services, she could start making connections between the concepts that were being signed and the words. Because she was having trouble simulating the reading that she was doing at home. And that's a problem that a lot of the students, they don't make that connection or see, so that's why I include that what we are doing there is, we are wanting to work with students as much because they think, and as much because we are trying to prod them, move them toward recognizing this will help them improve their language acquisition skills.

There was a student, one more anecdote. There was a student at a secondary school in our previous research who had the epiphany. It clicked for her that one day she was in her biology class, and she didn't know meiosis. It was either that or mitosis, cell dividing, and she didn't know that. She said well, what's that? And she read it in the notes. And her interpreter signed it, oh, she says, I know that. She knew the concept, she didn't know the word. And if she didn't know that she didn't know, she didn't know the difference between the two, she would be at home reading chapter whatever, three or four, on meiosis and mitosis, because she knows the concept but not the word. And when she understood that there was a gap, not in her learning, but between language acquisition, text-based and English acquisition, that's language based, she started using the notes in different ways.

So, what do we do? So, this is the need for these students. What we do is computer-based collaborative note taking is using laptop computers, radio wave networks and collaborative software. I will describe each component of these and tell you a little bit about them. The laptops, I am actually going to bring all of these up all at once. Don't feel like you have to simulate any of this. It is just a bit of history so that I can show you where we are at now. The laptop technology has been around for several years now. The earlier versions, these Power Book, 145s the Power Book 145s were out around '91, '92. The only way that you could have interconnectivity between computers was to use a printer cord at the time. So, that made you pretty static in a row, unlike what I told you at the beginning of the presentation, which is what we will get to in a little built. Where we started, we were in a classroom but you were basically sitting side-by-side, and to a degree, that can get to the student, you are putting them into a corner or a part of the room, not allowing the students to move freely as you would any other student. You are setting them up.

And what was nice about the evolution of the technology, as you can see not only was the technology getting better, but physically, geographically it say freeing up the students in the room, and the interpreter, and, and the note taker. So what happened was that we have -- the reason I put these up here, is also to say that all of these technologies are still available, and they still work, and they are still inexpensive because the, the newer, the technology gets, the cheaper the older technology gets, and while I wouldn't recommend a couple of these early models that I am going to talk about briefly, several of these, which are now a few years old, are on the market, inexpensive. You can get them refurbished. They run the same software I will be demonstrating for you today, and they, you know, they work just fine.

Computer technology, unlike other industries, the computer industry -- the computer industry has a computer turnover every six months to a year, they come out with something bright and shiny, new and improved. Well, however new and improved it is, it is not all that much better unless you are something who -- you are somebody that is a graphic designer or architect, and somebody that needs the brand new software to accomplish what you do in your work. But if you are doing this kind of in-class writing, when you are talking about using these computers for word processing, and for accomplishing your assignments and doing all kinds of other things, you don't need to have the highest machine that's out there. And if you wait, if you like a high-end machine, like one of the ones I will show you, if you wait another six months, even those machines will come down several hundred dollars in price, so as I like to say in meditation, just everybody take a deep breath, you know, just wait and the prices will come down.

As the technology evolved, they came out with a power book -- these 520s. What was nice about the 520s at the time, and those are the ones still available. They are black and white. However, they have two battery ports. And so that's great in a classroom, because you have double the battery life of these older model laptops, so if you want to -- if you know you are going to be note taking as a note taker or as a student, if you know you are going to go from class a to class b to class c, one after the other, then either you need a place to plug in eventually or, you need -- or you need a computer that sustains use for several hours without interruption. And this 520 allows you to do that. Again, the newer model, that I will show you, even though it only has one battery port, they do last several hours now because the batteries have improved. But that was an issue for us yesterday, right, we were talking about the, the, we were talking about the assistive listening devices, and which one were we talking about?

>> The FM system.

>> Thank you, we were talking about the FM system and that
They eat batteries, and I have had that experience myself in a class with, with, I was working with a graduate student in philosophy. And we were in, because she's a graduate student, the nature of those classes tends to be two and three-hour seminars, rather than a 50-minute lecture three days a week, so one particular class that I did note taking with her in was a 3-hour -- 3-hour seminar once a week, and by the second hour, between the second, going into the third hour, she was having problems with that. So, even though it seems like sort of a silly issue to talk about when we are talking about this high end technology, batteries are what power the technology and it is really important to think about that if you are thinking about using these technologies in the classroom and again these power book 520 models have those power points. The G3, which is -- I left this too high. This one. Is a really nice machine. But, it is more for presentational work --

>> audience speaker:  Would you like me to move?

>>Bo Adan:  No, no, I can't lift it because it is plugged into too many things. These are wonderful machines. They aren't necessary for doing this work. What's really nice about them, though, is that they have come down considerably in price. I mentioned the migrant education grant that a colleague of mine is involved in. She was able with the Oregon State Board of Education to, to get about 20 of these. At some, you know, wonderful discount, not only because she was in the ed institution but also buying several of them at, at one time, and also, then again, because these G3s which were so wonderful two years ago, are now, which were so wonderful two years ago, they are not dinosaurs but falling now that we have Ibooks and the G4 and all these other brand new banking technologies, so all after sudden, a computer, which honestly, this is like, I don't know what, this is like a 1995 Toyota. You know. It will still run for another hundred thousand miles and you don't need to trade it in. If it works just fine for those purposes and it is wonderful in the classroom and what she is doing in the migrant ed project.

But what I really want to talk about are these Ibooks, which although they are newer on the market, they, are actually less expensive than these G3s were. These are running right now, maybe about $1400, $1500, and that's actually for the newer models now, which have firewire, which people are using for digital video, which you don't need. These first generation Ibooks are now at about $1,000. So, they are coming down very quickly. What's nice and what I skipped with these other models is that we went from using these printer cords to an infrared technology. And the infrared devices, we called wireless, and they were kind of, sort of wireless. What they allowed you to do was take an infrared device and hook it into the back of one computer and take another infrared device and hook it into the back of another computer. I could be here, you could be in the back of the room, and we could get these computers to communicate together.  The problem was --

>> audience speaker:  At what point in this progression of text does that fit in?

>>Bo Adan:  Yeah, those were -- you could use the infrared device with the 160s and the 180s, the 520s, the 190s, and yep, you can. And if you wanted to you could use it with the G3s. And the infrared devices were hit and miss. They were effective, but you had to be in a room that didn't have halogen lighting, and you had to be, when we were in the secondary schools, the problem was that a lot of those schools, and you never knew, depending on the school you were going into, some of them, horribly for me, had no windows at all. And I thought, what a horrible way to educate a child. Like this room. What a horrible way for us to meet. And but the downside was some of them had banks of windows. And even in Oregon, where we don't get all that much sunlight for many months of the year, if you were setting up those computers anywhere on that half of the room, where you have got this indirect light, it would interfere with the infrared signal. And so that was problematic.

The technology worked in theory. In practice, it was problematic, and we saw that yesterday even with the FM system and the infrared device.
It is wonderful technology. They just haven't quite figured it out yet. And with the infrareds, those are still available, but the particular company that we had been going through to get the devices changed its name, moved to Israel, changed the product line and then went out of business. That's over about a 4 1/2 to 5-year period, so we decided okay, maybe this technology, it worked for us sometimes and didn't work for us others, let's try something else. So around that time, these Ibooks came out, and these Ibooks used something called an airport which is radio wave technology, which is seamless and wireless, and although it takes a while on some technical parts how to set it up, once it does, it is golden. It works. It doesn't fail you. It hasn't ever failed me at this point. Knock on wood. Let's talk about that.

>> audience speaker:  I know on our campus with C-Print technology, when we try to use the wireless stuff, and there's been like a computer lab next door or something, and it gets all messed up, have you had experiences or problems like that?

>>Bo Adan:  We haven't so far with this technology. One thing, you know, I wish the person you loved having yesterday was in this room today. His name was Mitch, he seemed to know a lot about the FCC regulations. He was suggesting that there is a band width 72 to 76 mega-hertz at which the, that's the hearing aid bands. And I was trying to find -- I didn't bring the, the documentation for the airport with me. It does come with, you know, when you buy these computers. And so I don't know what, what the, the hertz is for these, but so far, we have not had interference with that. Again, knock on wood, that doesn't mean we won't, but so far, it has worked really well.

>> audience speaker:  Can you speak to a little bit about, I don't think it is peer-to-peer, right? Don't you need the airport server for that?

>> No, isn't that lovely? I will speak to that, thank you.

>> audience speaker:  And the fact that you can just put a radio -- even though I love my brother, Macs, and I wouldn't put them down --

>> Bo Adan:  Yes, you will. [ laughter ]

>> audience speaker:  No, but you can put a PC radio card in any PC, I mean, you don't need an Ibook, you can just have the PC radio card in the PCMCIA slot in any computer. It is not as fast as a Mac but, it can be on the PC side and Mac side --

>>Bo Adan:  It can be. You are correct in terms of this technology, the software that's out there for collaboration and synchronous note taking is Mac-based right now, and again, is out of our hands. The reason we went with Macs is that's what the software that was out there, which is called, Aspects, and which I will demonstrate for you and talk a little bit more about, today is, is Mac platform only.

>> audience speaker:  Wonderful. So my next question would then be, any Mac laptop that has a PCMCIA slot type thing, you could work, right?

>>Bo Adan:  I would think so, yep. I don't know if it will interconnect with an Ibook but between those, yeah, between two PCs, that has the slot card, yes, yes. So, there is a software product called "Aspects." and it is synchronous collaborative working software, the wonderful thing about this, that's exactly what it is and all that it is. It is not an esoteric software program that takes a lot to use, a lot to learn, a lot to read and think about. It is exactly like a word processing program and functions as such, except that it allows for interconnectivity, simultaneousness and collaboration.

Just in case everybody isn't familiar, by synchronous what I mean is you can work literally at the same time. E-mail would be an example of something that's asynchronous. You don't know what I am talking about, until I type my e-mail and send it to you. With this program, what I type shows up on your computer, or –

>> audience speaker:  Like ICQ.

>>Bo Adan:  Yes, and you can be typing simultaneously, as well, and working together, so that's what synchronous and simultaneous and collaborative, that's what I mean when I use those words. The other program that we found helpful, is something called QuicKeys. That's not so easy to learn, but students don't know anything about it. That's at the training, trainer training the trainer level. Does everyone know what macros are? Anybody not? Should I explain? Okay, good, happy to.

It is basically automation software. Makes something that you do all the time routine. So, in other words, if I had to, in the physical world, if I was going to wear this jacket and this shirt and these pants and these shoes every single day, same pair, right, and I knew that's what I was going to do and every day I was going to put the pants on first, then jacket and then the shoes, I could either take the time to do that every single day, step one, two, three, four, or if I could magically program the universe so I could just press a button and it would do all these things for me, step-by-step, I would like that a lot better. I wouldn't like the smell of my clothes after a few days, however.

What we use the QuicKeys for is to set up, and when I demonstrate this for you, it is good I am talking about it now, it will take a 15 to 20-step process and reduce it to one key stroke. And that's perfect for a lot of reasons. One, it means that in terms of training the trainers, they don't have to remember how to do a lot. They simply have to know how the macros work. Two, when you are in class, whether the trainer is acting as a note taker or you are hiring other note takers to do the work, they don't have to think about. They can also use the shortcut, command to set up aspects. And then, of course, three, the student has nothing to fear, either, nothing to think about or worry about. It is one key stroke for the student, one stroke for the note taker computer and they work seamlessly, so that kind of technology is wonderful, again, if it is easy to use. If it is not easy to use, it gets in the way, and so what we wanted to do and why we invested time and energy learning about this is because aspects is great and does everything we want it to do but in order to set it up every day to do the same thing every day, there is about a 15 to 20-step process of opening documents and sizing windows and margin and is setting things up and it is simple things to do, but you don't want to spend five minutes at the beginning of every class when the teacher, especially, at the post-secondary level is already beginning a lecture in a timely way. Yes.

>> audience speaker:  Before you go on, can I just ask about your application choice especially the G4s are coming out and the things are getting faster, I am wondering why you didn't take, like a dragon speak -- a voice recognition, voice to text track, especially when you have professors that teach every day so that, you know, the software gets better and better with one person talking, so I am just wondering why you did the --
 

>> Bo Adan:  Yeah.

>> audience speaker:  A note taker, you know, that just so much more, especially when we type out the cost prohibitive and things like that.

>>Bo Adan:  It is a good question. My answer may not be the, may not be a good one. It is just, just my response. What we were doing at the time was looking at the best available technology that would serve our needs. We were looking at Dragon Dictate, an earlier version at the time, and even now, Natural Speaking, 6.0 is out. But even that, it takes a lot to train your voice to the computer, and then -- it takes a lot to train your voice to the computer, and even then it is only 85% accurate. The head of assistive technology for disability services, and at the University of Oregon, his name is James Bailey, about a year ago, did -- no, not even that long ago, did a demonstration, Dragon Dictate and here's a guy that spent hours and hours and hours just him, his voice, a single computer, and I thought it was going to be wonderful and seamless, and it wasn't by any means. And so my response was that, and may just be my prejudice, I am not sure yet, but I am not ready to see that technology works well enough for our purposes yet. I think it will. But it hasn't yet.

>> audience speaker:  Has the power but not the application strengths.

>>Bo Adan:  I think so. I think that's where we are at. That could just be my prejudice because I haven't been working with 6.0 yet, maybe it is far better, I am only what people are telling me and they are saying that it is, it is not up to speed yet.

>> audience speaker:  There is a fundamental difference in what you are proposing and what he's proposing, and that is you are getting a speech to text transcript, similar to what our real-time captionist is providing and the volume is overwhelming for most students. So most of them prefer note taking that encapsulates and promotes the hierarchy of information and so on, categorizes the information, and puts it in a more digestible form.

>>Bo Adan:  And I will show you a couple of examples of that in this presentation of actual notes of note takers and students because that has been an issue and we were talking about that yesterday with the issue of CART and CAN and C-Print, those are really effective technologies. What they do is then, then the technology is out-stripping the needs and desire of the student, we have students who, at least in our project, who they didn't want transcription because they never used it, and ultimately what we want them to do is use the notes, if they are not using the notes, then the best technology is not working in the best, best service way, right. So some students do like that and want every word. And as Pat was talking about, we have somebody who is aspiring to medical school, there are going to be cases where absolutely, somebody wants every single word, item, and syllable, but the general students that we have encountered say we don't, we don't want 25 pages of text. We want the five pages coming out of the condensation.

>> audience speaker:  My thought was with voice recognition software, multiple participants become a problem. Just whereas this would not. The note taker, regardless of who is talking you will get it, with voice recognition you have to have somebody paraphrase that person whose voice is not programmed.

>> audience speaker:  I guess I would say it is a preference issue because, of course, you know, in talking about deaf education, I want the best connection that I can have with my student not with an interpreter, via an interpreter, so yeah, it would depend on -- on the choice.

>>Bo Adan:  And that's legitimate and that's why I couched my response, this is going to be my prejudice, my bias because I think that's right. It really depends on where you are coming from and what, you know, what your goal is, your attitude is. That's right. I am sorry, excuse me.

>>> Just to kind of place things in perspective. Percentage-wise if we are talking about a 75% accuracy, I mean, that sounds pretty good, but that also means that every fourth word is incorrect. And if we are talking about a 90% accuracy every tenth word is incorrect, that's pretty amazing.

>>Bo Adan:  Yeah.

>> The airport card I have already referred to, it is radio wave, it is wireless. What's your name, I am sorry?

>> audience speaker:  Cameron.

>>Bo Adan:  What Cameron was asking before was -- I am sorry, I am forgetting.

>> audience speaker:  I was asking about an airport station.

>>Bo Adan:  Right, the base station since we never have to use them, that's why the question went out of my head. When Macintosh was selling this technology, they were saying, wow, we have got this new technology, and we have this thing called "airport," and what it does is allows these computers to talk together, will even talk through walls. What you need to do is buy this piece of technology, an airport card, and you have to insert it, goes under the key board and that's a whole other conversation. But then you have to buy this thing called a base station, and you set up the base station somewhere. See, mostly right, we are using these technologies in educational settings. They are mostly being advertised as business technologies. And there is nothing wrong with it, just that we have to rethink the advertising, and so it occurred to me, well, I don't need this to go through walls. I don't need to have this network to a bunch of computers, wirelessly within 150 feet, which is how they were advertising it. I need this to work between two or more computers in a classroom between a note taker and one or more students. Do I need to buy the space station? The answer is no. You can set up one of these computers to be the base station. The base station, all that word means, that's their term of art. It means "transmitter."

Basically, we are talking about transmission and reception the base station equals transmitter, so, in other words, you don't need to buy this $300 piece of equipment and set it up to be the transmitter that networks the computers. Rather, you simply set up one of these computers, in this case, the tangerine, to the blueberry, and that receives transmission.

>> audience speaker:  So if you had multiple users in the same school going to different classes, I would need two to transmit and multiples that receive?

>>Bo Adan:  No, no --

>> audience speaker:  I have got a kid in honors, CWI and another kid over in world lit, and both of them are using these simultaneously first period every morning, five different kids, two of them need to be transmitting capability.

>>Bo Adan:  Oh, well, let me break it down for you a little bit better, what you mean is that, if -- let's say you have got classroom "a" a, note taker and three students. That, one of those computers would be a transmitter, a base station, the other three, would receive, you are in classroom "b," one of those needs to be a transmitter and another a receiver.

>> audience speaker:  Will they conflict?

>>Bo Adan:  No, no. They won't actually -- and they won't precisely because you don't have this base station that you brought. The base station, as they advertise it, will go through concrete and steel walls and all of that, but that's kind of what I was talking about yesterday with the, with the FM systems, is that wow! It is a great, high-end technology but in this case, it is technology that's too good for its use because you want to communicate within the room and not bleed out and interfere with other rooms, so that's why I was asking Pat yesterday, well, do they have a lower end technology that does the work without worrying about, you know, in other words it maybe only carries 30 feet instead of 130 feet, so you don't worry about bleeding into another room.

>> audience speaker:  And limiting 6-1?

>>Bo Adan:  No, I don't know the base station to the transmitter?

>> audience speaker:  Yeah.

>>Bo Adan:  Um I haven't used it with more than that, so I don't know. Do you think that's right?

>> audience speaker:  That's what I have read before.

>>Bo Adan:  I would need to check on that because what we have been concerned with is how many students can use it, use the software, and the conference software aspects, you can have 31 students to one computer. But, I don't know about the radio wave technology because we haven't been in a situation yet. See, I am not sure that, I am not -- I don't think it is infinite but I don't think that -- six sounds kind of limiting but I will have to check on that. I think that's how they sold the airport station because they said, you can only have so many, and it looks cool, so that's why people want to buy it.

>>Bo Adan:  Because the accompanying documentation when I bought these didn't -- never said that, never said I was limited, which doesn't mean I am right, I just never encountered that but I didn't buy a base station so I didn't read that technology, maybe it says it if you buy the base station. Yes? In front first.

>> audience speaker:  Are they wired so that they are innately a sender or receiver or are they capable of doing both when you program them and you program them according to -- the one that you want.

>>Bo Adan:  Yes, I programmed the blueberry to be that one, so when I bought them, I bought both, and I told myself, Bo, make life simply and program the orange to be that and the blueberry to be the receivers and then I don't have to think about it, but yeah, they are all -- they are identical computers. I could have programmed the blueberry.

>> audience speaker:  And you could still program it otherwise?

>>Bo Adan:  And I could still, I could change it, yeah, I could change it and say, tomorrow, you know be what? I am tired of it that way and I want the blueberries to be the transmitter and the orange to be the receiver, indeed.

>> audience speaker:  We have FM systems and we are thinking of FM assistive listening, we are near two military institutions, one of which is an air force base which uses ton of band width so we have problems with our FM assistive listening, picking up people broadcasting things, and bringing in planes and fun stuff like that. Plus, you know, the fire and the police and the 9-1-1, all that stuff bloods in. Are these used in the same section of band width so we have more competition or is this a different chunk of the band width of the radio waves?

>>Bo Adan:  I apologized I laughed because I thought you were wondering when we get on airplanes and they tell you to turn these things off, I thought you were going to and if we would be bringing down planes.

>> audience speaker:  I know better than that.

>>Bo Adan:  Phew! I am not responsible for that. What technologies are you using specifically that you are finding interference with?

>> audience speaker:  What we are having problems with is just the FM listening devices.

>>Bo Adan:  Those I haven't found are interfering with the computers, so my logic tells me that these wouldn't be -- wouldn't interfere, but I don't know.

>> audience speaker:  Supposedly those are shielded and they know about that. They have put the standardized shielding around the airport so supposedly, it is supposed to be a seamless interconnect. Because they are in a business office. They have lots of issues with shielding, so that's what they say, and I love Macs, so I believe them. [laughter]

>>Bo Adan:  I am a believer. Another piece of software, that we won't talk about today, we won't have time but I did want to include it here because it is so amazing, have any of you ever worked with or heard of "Inspiration?" anybody?

>> audience speaker:  Yeah.

>>Bo Adan:  It is a really amazing software tool. It allows for concept mapping and outlining and it is something that we will work with students outside of class, graphic, as well as text-based, and for knowledge representation, we can teach students to use it for textbook note taking, self-testing, all kinds of wonderful ways in which inspiration is used, and again, it is a question of technology, catching up with us in this case, because I didn't see her here at this conference, which is too bad, Cheryl Allison, who is the disability's services coordinator at Linn Benton Community College wound up using inspiration for her dissertation so it is something we use with kids and they have a k-12 program and also used with college students, also so wonderfully versatile that there are people using it at a graduate level, and she used it -- I wish I had it at that point in graduate school, as well. It is a wonderful program, and she -- in fact I think that she said that she was doing a distance, distance education, distance learning program, where inspiration was a requirement, that they had to learn to use that as part of an education course that she was taking.

>> audience speaker:  It is so quiet. I am a note taker, and I work at Western Oregon University and that's what I am sitting in this corner and doing right now, and I was wondering if, now I lost my thought. Shoot, oh, well, I worked with Cheryl Allison at Lane Community College back in 1994, but they were offering me a Mac -- I know, where do I get the training to do it. To do this technology.

>>Bo Adan: In this case, it could be from us, from me. Specifically there are a couple of other people that I work with at the U of O that do this, with other projects, so let's talk afterwards.

So, in the classroom, what we are doing is we are -- I am going to run through this a little more quickly. Students and note takers are paired. They are taking computer-based notes from lecture and discussion, and what the students get to do, which is nice about this, is that they can have, have print-outs of the notes, both of their notes and the note takers' notes, so the students', the note taker's notes, these are dynamic, what's great about taking these notes in the classroom is unlike -- is it does not depend on the organizational structure of the instructor, as we all know having gone to colleges, you have some people who are very well organized in their protections and some who are not, not because they are not all knowledgeable and good people, just some people are more organized in their presentations and some people are not.

And the ones who are, speak to you in a near outline form. And the one that I have got five things to say to you today and in point a, three examples and point b, two examples, and point c, et cetera. And you have got some who are just everywhere, and they are anecdotal, and sometimes it is not even the instructor, it really is the nature of the beast. If you were in a literature class, there is a more free flow of discussion and ideas than if you were going to take somebody through a procedure in a physics class or in learning how to balance equations in an introductory chemistry class, for example. So, it is also the nature of the course that you are taking.

The problem for a note taker, usually NCR paper or just straight pen and paper if you are a hearing student, is if you start writing notes on a piece of paper and somebody -- oh, you know what? I forgot to tell you about this. Well, then you are drawing arrow and is diagrams and some and that, or if you are taking, if you are taking notes using C Print or CART, once again, it has to come next, and even though next on, on the page is in no way related to what came before it, it is related to what came ten minutes before it. And what's nice about using computer-based note taking is it is dynamic, as we all know from using a word processor, you scroll back up and click back up into the page, where you want to -- or cut and paste a segment of notes, and you can refer to it that way, and it makes it more dynamic for the student and note taker as you go along. So here is a small example.

Now, understand that this is entirely static because this is a power point presentation. I am going to get through this quickly and just refer to it, and then I am going to turn these on and demonstrate it to you so you can actually see how it works and then we can gather around and look. I wanted another table in here, but I couldn't find a table anywhere. While you were still eating your lunch I was busy looking for a table. So, too many wires. I like being wireless, and this makes me wired. So what you do is there is something -- the term of art here again is this was originally designed as a business application, so you will see terms of art here that are more suggestive of business than education, you know. Sort of ignore that. The communications network, you are on a local network between computers.

You are setting this up, called a conference, so you create this thing that's called a conference, and in order for us to create what you are visualizing here, this note taking conference, as I said, is about a 15 to 20-step process so what we wanted to do was make that routine and automated. So, we invested in this automation software, called QuicKeys, so this is the final product. This is what it looks like. You have a note taker who can take notes in one document, window and a student who can take notes in this window, and there is something I have saved when I demonstrate for you that I didn't show you up here. Just so you will see how neat this can be.

But also the student and note taker can pop into each other's windows, so that if the student doesn't understand something the note taker is saying, the student can -- doesn't have to signal the note taker. Doesn't have to say, what, what was that. Just simply clicks into this window and can type in a question, right there, and can do so simultaneously so the note taker is taking notes and the student can be asking a question, even as the note taker continues, excuse me, as the note taker continues to take notes.

>> audience speaker:  How does the student's question get transmitted to the note taker?

>>Bo Adan:  The student is using one of the laptops, and simply types in the question. Those -- these two -- let me go back to it. This window, document window, the note taker is taking notes in. This document window is the, the window in which the student might be taking notes. These two windows are on the note taker's computers. These two windows are simultaneously on the student's computer. So, literally as the student types the notes here, the note taker's computer sees them.

>> audience speaker:  But I thought that one was a transmitter and one was a receiver.

>>Bo Adan:  It is a transmitter and a receiver for the purpose of creating a, an interconnectivity between the computers. Not for the purpose of dictating who can, who can send or receive information.

>> audience speaker:  So the receiver can actually transmit?

>>Bo Adan:  Absolutely.

>> audience speaker:  I have got it.

>>Bo Adan:  Can send and receive information. This is just for the purpose of creating the connection.

>> audience speaker:  Can the student somehow put their notes inside the notes of the other one so that they are somehow merged?

>>Bo Adan:  Exactly. We typically advise against doing that during class because there is too much going on, but that's precisely what students do after class. Is after class when they are taking these, studying them, they can get them, and in some cases when we were in the post-secondary, when -- sorry, when we were working with secondary students, we were allowing the students to take the computers home. And the post-secondary setting we aren't doing that. They are staying in the disability's services offices but the students can work with them there or they can get the notes on disk, they can have a print-out of them so they have them side-by-side, or they can have them on disk. If they have a copy on disk then they can simply go to the computer lab, themselves, and then merge the notes, and they can either do it with the two documents that exist, and cut and paste text between the notes, or they can create a, just open up a new document, and create a third set of notes, which is just taking the best of the note taker's notes and the best of the students and cut and paste them into the next document, the student makes their own set of notes.

>> audience speaker:  Can this technology measurably improve the performance of a student who doesn't have a special need?

>>Bo Adan:  Well, this is my -- this is -- [ laughter ]

>>Bo Adan:  Thanks for asking that question because I wouldn't get to say this unless -- I will give you your $5 later. [ laughter ]

>>Bo Adan:  You know, I think this technology would be great for anyone and everyone. I think that one of the shortcomings of our educational system continues -- educational system across the board continues to be, and this was true from my own education at the time, anyway, I have become a good note taker, self-taught, but is that we were told, well, why do we take reading, writing and arithmetic? Approximate why, because you will use it across the board in different classes and need it throughout your life. Well, what's the other thing that we need to know how to do across the board and throughout our life? Take notes. Think. We need to know how to think about what someone else is saying, how to learn from what someone else is saying. Not so that we can memorize it, but so that we understand and simulate and synthesize information. That is a fundamental to everything we are doing, and yet we don't teach note taking skills. In classrooms. And so I do think that this would immeasurably improve potentially, you know, students who are, who are hearing impaired, learning disabled, students who have no hearing impairment or learning disability. Yeah, I think students across the board would benefit from this technology.

>> audience speaker:  I have a question about --

>> Bo Adan:  Can I interrupt you one more second? The reason I joked about, it was great I could answer the question is, we don't -- even though this is a need across the board, bottom line, in terms of money and funding is nobody is funding a program to do note taking for general education. This program was -- this is, this -- our grant is funded through Office Of Special Education Programs through the us Department Of Education which put out a Request For Proposal to do work with post-secondary institutions with staff and disability services. So, and for students who have disabilities. So, it didn't ask, you know, if I had said, written a grant that said we would like to do this with everybody, you know, they would have said, that's not what we asked. Wrong answer. [ laughter ]

>> audience speaker:  So your answer to me is you think it would help anyone, is it documented though?

>>Bo Adan:  I don't know, I don't know. We are only working with special needs.

>> audience speaker:  My question was, curious about, I just know in my classroom, you know, the kids are always asking, oh, you know, can you sign that again? Or, you know, we just have a lot of time issues. So, I was wondering if you had -- did you have the teachers, were they all oral? Were they all voicing? With the note takers? Did you have -- were any of the teachers signing?

>> No, the teachers were not but some students in the, in the secondary system, some would have note takers and interpreters in the classroom. And as I said, some would focus on their interpreters, some would engage in both, and frankly, there was never a rule. My -- I would just assume that a student who had a moderate to severe to profound hearing loss would be focusing on an interpreter and not focusing on the notes. We have a student who I wouldn't say was exceptional. She was bright but not exceptional. And she was profoundly deaf, but would, was taking great notes and doing so because after a few months she was modeling the note taker's notes. So, she was spending as much time learning from her interpreter as she was from the note taker's notes, but the teachers, to specifically answer your question, the teachers we worked with so far have not signed -- because again we are working the regular education classroom, we were doing some tutoring in the secondary schools where we work in resource rooms, and there you would have, have deaf, hard of hearing educators so sometimes there would be signing happening there, in giving instruction to the, the, to the student from the teacher. But again, that wasn't a biology class or a math class or something like that, it was outside of the regular classes.

>> audience speaker:  I noticed with the computer and being able to type the student could possibly watch the sign language at the same time and type because you can't write and watch at the same time, you need to be able to see what you are
--

>> Bo Adan:  Yes, and that was the distinguishing feature, as I said, she was bright --

>> Bo Adan:  Yes, and that's what I was saying, she had touch typing skills, not 60 or 70 words a minute but she could do it, she could type, type notes while listening and, you know, via her interpreter, yes.

>> audience speaker:  Might be far fetched but have you done anything with situations where the professor is using a lot of graphic overheads with pictures and things like that where somebody needs to draw -- do the drawings or else having them scan those in and integrate them into the notes?

>>Bo Adan:  We haven't done scanning but what we do with instructors who are using a lot of overheads is we go back to, not to be overwhelmed with the beauty of the technology, we want to think about the pedagogy, we just ask the instructors, will you make copies of the handout for the students, and that seems to be the easiest thing to do, there are draw programs, and one of those on here that we use typically as a support is Claris works, or now called apple works 6, that's a word processing, a spreadsheet, a draw and paint program, so you could open up the draw program, do a drawing and cut and paste it into the notes but it would take -- that's too time consuming.

>> audience speaker:  I can't see doing a biological drawing with a mouse.

>>Bo Adan:  Right. Yeah. It is too time consuming.

>> audience speaker:  Actually now they have white boards where you can just put it on the light board and it transfers to the computer, so, so some day maybe you can integrate it all.

>>Bo Adan:  Exactly, some day, and there is a nice thing for students, this I still find to be useful but, but a little, still a little bit cumbersome in the classroom, you have to get good at it. It is called equation editor, and "equation editor," allows you to open up another window off to the bottom of the screen, and you can type in all kinds of equations and cut and paste them right into the aspects conference for notes so that works really well for the chemistry, math class, that sort of thing. But, as high as, even Algebra II, you can use word processing because you can just use the letter x for two-x plus 3-y, equals z. And polynomials, you know, if you said 3-a-2 plus 4-a-3, you know, you can super script that, rather than use this equation editor.

If my counterpart, Carolyn, were here, she would be giving me the evil eye. Because she loves equation editor. I just -- she likes it and she has used it a lot. I still find that it is a little cumbersome for students to be using in the classroom.  Let me bring in Cathy again here. You are not really hearing this are you, anyway? I meant to bring speakers, but couldn't find them in our office to attach to all of this. But I think what I will do is turn this around and see if it is better. I thought the amplification would be better. But let's see if it does better this time. Oops. It is there.

>> [from video] “when students are in a class and speech reading instructor, very often the vocabulary is used in that lecture and if they haven't read the material beforehand, they very often will miss speech reading, that particular piece of vocabulary. More than likely that information will be captured within the note taker's notes, and they can refer to that, to their computer screen at that point and be able to grasp that information and fill in the blanks that they missed in the original lecture.”

>>Bo Adan:  And that's primarily what they have been doing at LCC, is they have been using this strictly as note taking, word processing, again, there are other applications that we use this for. This would be -- here's an example of some of the notes that are taken in a classroom. This is not an example of notes, what I wanted to do was I cut and paste, an example of a template of what we are look, we are looking at, and then here is the hierarchy we were talking about, this is a student in a -- excuse me, a note taker, talking about the kinds -- some of the things we are training them to do in the classroom, wanting them to get down the essential information, trying to organize and hierarchicize, phew, so you are basically covering the header, and things are things, these are things students don't think about doing, but they don't think about it because they are in the moment. And they are taking their notes, not thinking they need to refer to these notes later and have any sense of, well what day was that, what were we talking about, and what class was it, and especially when, with secondary students, this was always happening.

College students are a little better refined because they aren't going from period one to two to three. They do have a history class on a Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and a biology class on Tuesday, Thursday, so they have enough separation that they are not jumbling everything together all the time. So this model was more appropriate when we were working with the secondary students, with the college note takers, we still want them to replicate some of this but we realize that, that they are dealing with a population of students who are better able already to organize and distinguish between their classes. -- oh, I thought you --

>> audience speaker:  No.

>>Bo Adan:  And then here was an example of, of -- this was an example of, of a note taker and a student's notes. In her comparative literature classroom. As you can see, the note taker is getting much of the information down and summarizing it and synthesizing it here, and in the hierarchy and the student, if you were to compare and contrast, you can see that, that she was getting very little of it, and she was writing down very little of it. So, what she can do to answer your question earlier, is that to respond to your question, is to say that yeah, what she could do later is, she could come back and either cut and paste from this document into this one, or vice versa, or open up a third one and synthesize the two sets of notes together and use them for studying later. And I can't remember if I put -- I didn't. Okay.

And then this is -- there are a couple of video clips that I wanted to include. They are from a community college instructor, who exactly, was doing what you were suggesting so I will give you your $5 later for asking the question, thank you. Who was using a lot -- who had a lot of handouts in her class, and what we asked her to do, because she was using technologies, in her classroom and had computer-based overheads so, rather than try to replicate the drawings and the other things that she was doing, well, can you just print them out and have a copy? And she, you know, again, she was one of those teachers, wonderful, and accommodating and wanting to help, but just hadn't taken the step to think, oh, yeah, yeah, that's simple enough to do and just a matter of asking the question. And I captioned that, as well.

>> [from video] I really liked having a note taker in class. From the instructor's point of view because it kind of freed me up to focus on all of the students in class instead of focusing, having to really kind of zero in on the student who was getting some assistance. I knew that they had someone there who could fill in the gaps between what he was hearing, or not hearing, and what I was saying. And so.

>>Bo Adan:  And so, just a couple of comments from these folks on how it has impacted the work that they are doing, and as I promised, I will show you what this looks like.

>> [from video] Actually, I found the computer-based collaborative note taking system to be very valuable for a lot of our students. It seems to give them the background information that they may otherwise miss. It allows them to leave with notes that they can use for studying without much lag-time at all. Before we had computer note taking, hearing impaired speech readers were definitely one of the most poorly served group of students that we worked with, simply because we didn't really have much to offer them. Most hearing impaired speech readers don't use oral interpreters. A large portion of them don't sign, and having information in real-time for these students was simply not possible -- or it was quite expensive to provide. Having the computer-based collaborative notetaking system in place here at Lane has really been helpful for this population of students.

>>Bo Adan:  And Pat made the point in yesterday's workshop that there are 26 million, who are hard of hearing, and only 5% of those, was that right?

>> audience speaker:  6 million.

>>Bo Adan:  6 million use hearing aids but only 5% actually use sign. And among -- would you have said those 5% are proficient when you said that? Or even among those? They are not even proficient enough to get along in a classroom situation? So, this is, this is the issue, so we are having speech reading and other hard of hearing students who need some form of note taking and other assistance because interpreting ASL services, which may or may not be available, simply aren't useful for those students and we have to go to where the need is. I am going to skip the last comment by Mary. She is just saying nice things about the project.

Let me show you, if you want to gather around, let me just show you how this works. When I hit this computer command stroke, it will zip in front of your face much too quickly. And know that, you will have to trust me, that the fact that these two computers are sitting side-by-side here, means nothing. One of them could be here and one of them could be all the way in the back of the room. Notice, however, that there are no wires between them. So I am opening up the software, the conference window you saw earlier. And then I am going to use the commands. I just used a command comma, you can program it to say anything you want. Command, comma, is create, and command, period, is join, so it creates those two windows. And then this is receiving all of that information. Laty-da. And you can resize these, or not.

And the reason, then, I start taking notes here, and the computer, that is the blueberry, receives. It is hard to do this at the angle I am doing this at. So meanwhile the student can be taking notes, here, and they show up. And as I said, the student, even though the student is here, can just literally click into this, into the note taker's window, and ask a question. And that shows up. And we have set them up at a half screen here so that when you are typing, you never -- it never drops below the horizon. It kicks up so you are always seeing the text and it is always scrolling together, and if you don't feel like you want to interrupt what the student is doing, and this is only one macro, by the way, that I am setting up. You can set this up for one big screen, so you have only got the note taker, sending notes to the student and the student is receiving them but is not taking notes in a separate document. That's useful for the profoundly hearing impaired because they won't be taking notes but receiving them, so you can set them up in different ways.

I just wanted to show you an example of how you do it for simultaneousness. There is this thing called a "chat box." and it shows up at the bottom left, and I can, if I don't want to interrupt the notes, I can simply ask the question here. And it shows up, identifies the speaker, if you are using multiple computers, in this case, it is obviously the speaker because they are two computers, and it is, and it is received here, and then the student, or note taker can answer the question, and you have a running dialogue here on the bottom right. So, if you don't want to interrupt the notes, you have got that.

And then these are, again, two separate documents, so you save each of these documents and the note taker has a set of documents and the student saves a set, what is wonderful about this is that, is that you have this computer now has a note taker and student set, and this computer has a note taker and student set. So if for some reason the student who does take the computer home when we have a secondary school, if they erased it or lost it or damaged the computer, the note taker had a set of documents and as you know, if you put a disk in and you drag those documents onto the disk, that still is just a copy. The hard drive of the note taker's computer will always contain the original documents, so you have always got, got fail-safe for the students, because students will tell us, I lost my notes, I lost this and I lost that. I can't find it. And you know, they will do all kinds of things to the computer so it is always great. You have got one more copy.

>> audience speaker:  The dog ate my notes --

>> Dog ate my notes and I no longer accept that as an excuse having grown up with dogs.

>> audience speaker:  In practice, is the student asking the note taker a question?

>>Bo Adan:  That could -- sure.

>> audience speaker:  Or the student, is he asking the question or she asking that question of the note taker? What if the student doesn't voice for himself or herself? Have you ever, in practice, had the note taker voicing the question to the instructor? Does that happen?

>>Bo Adan:  That can. We try to have the student advocate so I have had students who will ask me questions when I have been in the classroom, myself, doing the note taking and if I know the student can voice for himself, I will try to be encouraging and say, that's a good question, why don't you ask now or after class.

>> audience speaker:  Can I have a couple of your handouts?

>> audience speaker:  Me, too.

>>Bo Adan:  Other questions before we wind up? Before I hurt myself? Great. Thanks. Thank you.

>> Thank you. [ applause ]