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Deaf and Hard of Hearing Cyber Community in STEM

The goal of the Deaf and Hard of Hearing Cyber-Community in STEM (DHH Cyber-Community) project is to use existing high bandwidth connections and human resources at and between universities to advance deaf and hard of hearing students in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Jointly with the University of Washington, Rochester Institute of Technology, and the National Technical Institute for the Deaf, the DHH Cyber-Community will create a technologically advanced infrastructure that will allow deaf and hard of hearing students to more easily pursue careers in STEM fields, increasing participation of deaf and hard of hearing students in STEM fields at all levels, from Bachelor's, Master's, to the Ph.D.

We are currently pursuing the following projects:

• ASL-STEM Forum - an online video forum to encourage the discussion of ASL signs for science, technology, engineering, and math concepts.
• ClassInFocus - an online multimedia classroom platform for students to access remote interpreters and captioners in a way that provides the best educational environment for STEM topics.

Other related projects:

• Summer Academy for Advancing Deaf and Hard of Hearing in Computing - an all-inclusive, academically challenging 9-week academy for deaf and hard of hearing students who are ready to enter or are in college and who are interested in computer science.

Upcoming/Recent Events

6/25/2008 - 6/27/2008 - The first annual DHH Cyber-Community Summit Workshop at Rochester Institute of Technology, home of the National Technical Institute for the Deaf. The goal was to energize the DHH Cyber Community members including students, interpreters, captioners, sign language linguistic researchers, educational technology researchers, and cyber infrastructure experts. The workshop resulted in comprehensive recommendations from each stakeholder group. This summit is funding by the National Science Foundation.