Liberated Learning at Saint Mary's

“It was 120 years ago that Alexander Graham Bell, who had strong ties to Nova Scotia in Atlantic Canada, began experimenting with speech recognition to help the Deaf. It seems fitting that a Nova Scotia university assumed a leadership role in advancing speech recognition to help persons with disabilities in the classroom and beyond.”  
 
Saint Mary’s University in Halifax, along with a dozen or so other schools from North America, Europe and Asia, make up the Liberated Learning Consortium.  Like Bell, with his drive to improve the world around him, they're working to improve the learning environment for students with disabilities through the innovative use of technology. 
 
From the Atlantic Centre of Research, Access and Support for Students with Disabilities, Saint Mary’s provides core support for the Liberated Learning project.  They work with IBM’s ViaScribe voice-recognition software to converts the spoken word into editable text and enable students to view transcripts of their professor’s lectures in real time.   Students are then able to download the transcripts or audio recordings of the lectures to their computers for additional review or to convert them to accessible materials like Braille.
 
While the primary focus has been to improve access for students with disabilities, other students benefit by having access to the notes in a different medium.  The application of the ideas being explored at Saint Mary’s are widening the options for all students and opening the doors for people who might have previously had difficulty learning in a conventional school environment.  This is another great example of the innovation to be found in Nova Scotia.
 
Learn more at: http://www.liberatedlearning.com/