My alma mater, Illinois School for the Deaf, got published in the Jacksonville Journal-Courier about how ISD is seeing an increase in enrollment numbers. I think it’s got to do with the technology and more information available through the web.

ISD sees enrollment boom by Darrin Burn.

Rachel Sweigart heard the wrong words at the wrong time. Or maybe it was simply one word too many.

There wasn’t one particular incident at her high school in Somonauk, said her mother, Arliss. But one day, the normally stoic 15-year-old came home in tears and Arliss and Scott Sweigart knew it was time for a change.

Rachel will soon attend the Illinois School for the Deaf, and she will be one of 46 new high school students there this year. There are 63 new students overall.

“Deafness is a low-incidence disability, if you want to call it a disability,” said ISD Superintendent Mary Beth Lauderdale. “Very few people have it. Fifty-three percent of deaf students are the only deaf kid in their school. They are looking for other kids like them.”

The Sweigarts recently visited ISD and Rachel was impressed, but told her parents she’d think about it. By the time they got back to their town about 30 miles south of Dekalb, she’d decided to go.

The Sweigarts did not know about ISD. Public schools are supposed to inform parents of deaf or hard-of-hearing students of all the options for their children, but Ms. Lauderdale said it sometimes doesn’t happen.

“The dad got on the Internet and typed in ‘deaf school’ and found us,” she said.

ISD is allowed by law to passively market itself — brochures in audiologists’ offices, for instance — but it cannot recruit.

The school is more than equipped to handle the influx of 63 students, said Director of Student Life Randy Shearburn. Thirty years ago, the school had close to 500 students. With the new arrivals, it now has 252. ISD is searching for a new algebra teacher, Ms. Lauderdale said.

So, if it wasn’t for the Internet, the Sweigarts wouldn’t have found out about ISD. The web is the way to go.

I wrote a blog about my experience at ISD. You can read it here.

Got this email from a friend. My alma mater, ISD, is one of the semi-finalists that could win $25,000 dollars from Expo, the maker of dry board markers. The one that has the most votes will win, so it needs every of your vote.

Click here to vote!

Hello Everyone!

The Junior High science room needs your help and it won’t cost you a thing- just a few minutes of your time! The science room is a finalist to win a $25,000 classroom makeover from Expo markers!!! How do we win? With your votes! There are five finalists from across the country- the classroom with the most votes will win the classroom makeover.

That’s how you can help! Please go to the link below and place your vote for my classroom. In addition- you can forward this to your home email and also use that email address(es) to vote. (One vote per email address). And also important is to send this on to your co-workers, friends, family, every one you know and ask them to vote also!

If you have students- please encourage and permit them to vote also!

(I’ll put something in the announcement papers).

Thanks for your assistance- your vote could make the difference!!!!

– Sherry Humphries

Thought I’d post this to help spread the word out.

Finally, Caption Playback on Google Video

“…however, this is exactly the same problem faced by the early proponents of CC, and it is this very issue which has compelled us to start with baby mis-steps sooner, rather than a giant leap of perfection later. Now that viewers can see the results, we hope that more people will be inspired to caption more videos, and that other services will be encouraged to support similar capabilities. The potential applications here for search quality, automatic translation, and speech recognition should also become more obvious.

Every time I watch TV I’m thankful to all of the many people who first developed and brought closed-captioning to fruition, and wish I could have helped them. So it’s enormously gratifying that Google Video has given me an opportunity to help carry on their work into new domains.” –Ken Harrenstien

“The learning process never ends, even on vacation.” by Megan Bode.

“My most important experience, however, had nothing to do with personal adaptation to an unfamiliar environment. On our first day in the hotel, we met a group of deaf kids across the hall. One of them, David, had some hearing, and was able to tell us that they were college students at Gallaudet, a school for the hearing-impaired. He taught us the American Sign Language alphabet, so that we had a rudimentary means of communicating. Clumsily using our hands, we made friends with the kids across the hall — inviting them over for drinks, playing games, and hanging out at clubs.”

It’s interesting that hearing people would have misconceptions about deaf people having some difficulty time to co-exist with their world. Of course we would find ways to get along, just a little patience and some open-mindedness are all it takes.

Saw this off Yahoo News from DeafPulse.com.

ST. AUGUSTINE, Florida (AP) — The Florida School for the Deaf and the Blind allowed felons to work on campus construction jobs during the past two years, according to interviews and documents.

Many of the workers were allowed on campus even though they had failed background checks, school employees complained.

The felons included a man convicted of domestic battery and selling cocaine; a man convicted of aggravated assault; and a man convicted of offenses including trafficking in hallucinogens, battery on his spouse and domestic violence, The St. Augustine Record reported Sunday.

Current and former staff members started complaining to school and state officials about nine months ago, saying school officials didn’t show concern for student safety, the newspaper said.

School president Elmer Dillingham said he believes the administration made acceptable decisions. He said the felons were supervised by a full-time off-duty police officer and only hired because the school could not find a felon-free construction crew to work on emergency construction projects.

“I don’t think, if you go to any public school in this state, that you’ll find a better security system,” he said.

.

Ha, how incredible was that.

I got a Dick’s gift card from my parents for my birthday. After some naked shopping, I decided to get this.

Got this from http://readthisforfun.blogspot.com/

Lol, so true…

1) IN PRISON – you spend the majority of your time in an8X10 cell.

AT WORK – you spend the majority of your time in a 6X8 cubicle.

2) IN PRISON – you get three meals a day.

AT WORK – you only get a break for one meal and you pay for it.

3) IN PRISON – you get time off for good behavior.

AT WORK – you get more work for good behavior.

4) IN PRISON – the guard locks and unlocks all the doors for you.

AT WORK – you must carry around a security card and open all the doors for

yourself.

5) IN PRISON – you can watch TV and play games.

AT WORK – you get fired for watching TV and playing games.

6) IN PRISON – you get your own toilet.

AT WORK – you have to share with some idiot who pees on the seat.

7) IN PRISON – they allow your family and friends to visit.

AT WORK – you can’t even speak to your family.

8) IN PRISON – the taxpayers pay all expenses with no work required.

AT WORK – you get to pay all the expenses to go to work and then they

deduct taxes from your salary to pay for Prisoners.

9) IN PRISON – you spend most of your life inside bars wanting to get out.

AT WORK – you spend most of your time wanting to get out and go inside

bars.

10) IN PRISON – you must deal with sadistic wardens.

AT WORK – they are called managers.

“To the computer users around the world, you’ve been blessed.”

http://www.flickr.com/photos/brevity/6625994/in/set-146801/

Wow, this is really cool and new idea in photography art. What you see in this pic is a blend of 50 different pictures using same tags: shadow and self. You can click on the link above to see how this was done. It certainly takes an abstract form and looks like 19th century’s impressionism.

I’m a big-time tech freak so I surf tech webs regularly and saw this new vacuum from Dyson. I’d already promise myself that I would buy a Dyson vacuum as soon as I buy a house but that’s like 5 years away from now. Now, this guy Dyson just released a new vacuum called DC15 with the ball movement. It’ll allow you to vacuum more efficiently and getting the work done more quickly. Seeing the pic has made me hardly wait to buy my first Dyson vaccum!

Saw this webpage about the study of eye movement on search engines such as Google.

A new study has added tangible evidence to the widely held view that top-ranking search results get the most attention from users, and that lower-ranking results are all but invisible to most people.

The joint study conducted by search marketing firms Enquiro and Did-it and eye tracking firm Eyetools examined the eye movements of users viewing Google search result pages.

The study found that most viewers looked at results in an “F” shaped scan pattern, with the eye travelling vertically along the far left side of the results looking for visual cues (relevant words, brands, etc) and then scanning to the right, as if something caught the participant’s attention.

The researchers called this pattern a “golden triangle” at the top of result pages. The triangle extends across the top natural search result, then angles back to the left of the page down to the bottom-most “above the fold” result, typically in the third or fourth position on the page.

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