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First day in the office for over a week – I can report it is still here – decorated in white!

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Now using Ping.fm to update my social networks

Today

A routine day but  with the pleasure of working from the garden at home:

• Processed e-mail and juggled diary commitments
• Wrote up my staff appraisal from last week
• E-mail discussion about writing to influence practice and the tension of this with the demands of RAE/promotion crieria
• Considered submitting a paper for this conference http://www.open.ac.uk/relive08/index.shtml
• Planing for further consultancy work with Simprentis (www.simprentis.com)
• Planning for ALPE project final plenary meeting and workshop

Now drinking a pint in the same – I must say now rather beautiful – garden.

Hello world!

I am head of the Accessibility in Educational Media team (AEM) at the Open University.  We are both a reseach group and have an extensive internal consulting role on accessibility and services to the OU’s 10,000 disabled students.

Current externally funded research:

• EU4ALL – see: http:www.eu4all-project.eu

  Publications:

  Boticario J. G., Cooper M., Montandon, L., van Dorp K-J.,Towards an Open, Standard-based, Reusable and Extensible Architecture of Services for Accessible Lifelong Learning: An Introduction to the EU4ALL Project, Proc EADTU Conference, Tallin, Estonia, 2006

  Cooper M., Boticario J. G., Montandon, L, An introduction to Accessible Lifelong Learning (ALL) – a strategy for research and development uniting accessible technology, services, and e-learning infrastructure, Proc EDEN Research Workshop, Barcelona 2006

• ALPE – see: http://adenu.ia.uned.es/alpe/

  (Publications pending)

Other research activities:

• Access to mathematics online and in education more generally
  The work currently internal to the OU working with Tim Lowe in Maths, Jonathan Fine in LTS and Mary Taylor in AEM. I be leading a bid for external funding of this work in the near future.
  
  Recent publication:
  

  Cooper, M., Lowe, T., Taylor, M., Access to mathematics in web resources for people with a visual impairment: considerations and developments in an open and distance learning context, Proc. International Conference on Computers Helping People, Linz, Austria, 2008 [In press]

  
  

• Remote Controlled Teaching Labs
  This was the subject of the PEARL project (http://iet.open.ac.uk/pearl/) that run from 2000-2003; a key finding of this project was that simpler low cost approaches were more likely to gain acceptance in education than the ambitious high tech facilities that were developed in the project. So with a small amount of pump priming internal funding I have been investigating the use of Lego Mindstorm Robotics to enable a low cost approach. The intention in the coming year is to apply for funding, possible from EPSRC, to fund a RF to continue this work.

  Recent publication:
  

  Cooper, M., Low-cost Remote Controlled Experiments – Cost and Market Issues, Proc. REV 2008, Düsseldorf, Germany [In press]

  PEARL project publications:
  

  Cooper M., Remote laboratories in teaching and learning – issues impinging on widespread adoption in science and engineering education, International Journal of Online Engineering Vol. 1, No. 1, 2005

  Scanlon E., Morris, E., Di Paolo, T, Cooper, M., Contemporary approaches to learning science: technology mediated practical work, Studies in Science Education, Vol. 38. Pp73-114, 2002

  Colwell, C., Scanlon, E., and Cooper, M. Using remote laboratories to extend access to science and engineering. Computers and Education, 38, 65-76. 2002

  Scanlon, E., Colwell, C., Cooper, M., Di Paolo, T. (2004) Remote experiments, reversioning and rethinking science learning. Computers and Education. 43, 153-163

• 3D Audio for HCI and in creating virtual worlds for eLearning for blind students
  This was the subject of a previous EPSRC grant. I am now in discussion with Simon Holland in OU’s Computer Science departmetn with view to launching a joint project around the new JLB Ambient Technology Labs at the OU again probably for EPSRC funding.
  
  Most recent publication:
  

  Cooper, M., Petrie, H. L., Three Dimensional Auditory Display: Issues in Applications for Visually Impaired Students, Proc. ICAD 04-Tenth Meeting of the International Conference on Auditory Display, Sydney, Australia, July 6-9, 2004

Current internal consultancy work includes:

• Accessibility in the OU-VLE (Moodle based)
• Metadata issues for managing accessibility in the Enterprise Content Management System and generally across the OU
• Efficacy and efficiency in computer supported services to disabled students

I would be happy to enter into discussion on any of the above topics.

Cheers,

Martyn

Martyn Cooper

Head: Accessibility in Educational Media team

Institute of Educational Technology

Open University, UK

Tel: +44 (0)1908 655729

Mobile: +44 (0)7980 912236

Skype: martyncooper

m.cooper@open.ac.uk

http://iet.open.ac.uk/pp/m.cooper/

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The Open University is incorporated by Royal Charter (RC 000391), an exempt charity in England & Wales and a charity registered in Scotland (SC 038302).