Project DEED, Distance Education for Education Diagnosticians. Putting Available Technology to Work via Internet for Rural, Bilingual Sites Along the Texas/Mexico 'Border Corridor.'

摘要

Project DEED is a four-year internet based special education personnel preparation program funded by the U.S. Dept. of Education, Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) as located at UTB/TSC. The project involves the preparation of practicing, bilingual teachers located in 8 rural sites to become educational diagnosticians, assessing students with possible disabilities. Instruction is accomplished through a combination of available resources, i.e., multimedia modules in synchronous format with videoconferencing, CD-ROMs, email, chat rooms and local mentors. Extensive time was required for the initial videoconference setup between all nine distal sites. Although there remain a variety of ongoing, technology related problems, evaluative data available on completion of the second year of the project supports the use of multimedia modules in conjunction with videoconferencing in the preparation of rural, special education diagnosticians.