Internet Resources for teachers working with Hearing Impaired students

The 4th post in a series providing an overview of web based resources for educators that work with Special Needs students.

We started this series a few weeks back by looking at resources for teaching students with ADD & ADHD, we focused on Autism & PDD the next week, and Visual Impairments last week, and this week we're looking at resources for instructors that work with Hearing Impaired students.

Below I provide a number of web based resources in each of a few specific categories: techniques & strategies, assistive technology, and ‘other' resources. I am really just scratching the surface here, as there are many resources available out there – I have culled out some of the cumbersome and poorly organized resources and zoned in on a concise, helpful set of information sources focused on our target topic.

Articles discussing tips and techniques for instructing the Deaf or Hearing Impaired
I came across plenty of articles about this subject, but have provided just a handful of the better ones, as there was often a fair amount of redundancy from one article to the next.

This page from the Ball State University website is intended for faculty working with students who are deaf or hearing impaired, and provides a great overview of the challenge of working with hearing impaired students, followed by tips and testing and classroom accommodations.

Best Practices for Hearing Impaired (students) from SpecialEd.about.com: Strategies for hearing impaired students.

Strategies for Teaching Students with Hearing Impairments: An informative set of insights and suggestions from Western Virginia University. The emphasis here is on how hearing impaired students often learn to “feign” comprehension, making it important to obtain feedback from them at every opportunity.

Working with Hearing Impaired Students: Another good set of insights and strategies, from Teachersfirst.com.

Assistive Technologies for the Deaf or Hearing Impaired student
As with the articles about teaching techniques for the hearing impaired student, there was a good amount of repetition when combing through the variety of listings I found on the subject. Again, I just picked a small set of articles that seemed to cover the full range of tools I came across.

An Educator's Guide to Hearing Disability Issues: I put this page first in the list, because it is thorough and quite informative, and because it bridges the informational sites (like those above) with those focused primarily on Assistive Technologies (below). There is a lot of information here, and many useful links are included as well.

This thorough article by Thomas J. Brown provides a more in depth view into many of these technologies.

This EducationWorld article provides a wider view of Special Ed, along with specific content regarding assistive technologies for the hearing impaired student.

Technology for Hearing Impaired Students: This page from Suite101.com discusses technologies that can assist the hearing impaired students. 

Other web based resources

Described and Captioned Media Program: This U.S. Dept. of Education-funded nonprofit provides a library of captioned and described educational videos for free loan to teachers, parents, and others working with K-12 students with vision or hearing loss. They're kind of like Netflix, except their collection only includes educational material (and they charge no fees of any kind, including postage, but you must meet the eligibility criteria for membership).

Forums: The forums I discussed in a recent post can provide an opportunity to learn from, or interface with, other educators. I direct the reader to this post to learn more about online communities for educators that work with special needs students.

Next week we will wrap up this series with a post focused on resources for teachers working with students with other physical disabilities. In the meanwhile, I invite readers to contribute any comments, thoughts, requests – anything that fits in with this series of posts. Thanks!