Southeastern faculty recognized with Tech in the Works Award
Contact: Tonya Lowentritt
7/14/10
HAMMOND – Two faculty members with Southeastern Louisiana University’s College of Education and Human Development have received a National Center for Technology Innovation’s (NCTI) 2010 Tech in the Works Award.
One of four teams to receive the award, Becky Sue Parton and Robert J. Hancock, both assistant professors in the Department of Educational Leadership and Technology, were honored for the development of interactive storybooks for deaf kindergarteners. The award also earned the research pair $20,000, with pledged matching support, to facilitate their research project.
“Dr. Hancock has authored a new storybook for the project which contains all original artwork and introduces children to colors and a new family of characters,” said Parton.
Parton and Hancock are working with Mike Burton, founder of Burton Vision, to distribute the books.
The Tech in the Works 2010 competition promotes collaborative research in developing innovative and emerging assistive technologies. It also promotes excellence in research to improve educational outcomes for all students, with a focus on students with special needs.
The competition requires “quick turnaround” collaborative research to inform the development of innovative and emerging technologies. The grant encourages developers and researchers to work together to study the effectiveness and feasibility of a particular technology intervention.
The competition winners join 16 other developer-research teams that have received support through the competition in previous years. Teams will be highlighted in upcoming NCTI case studies. They will also share preliminary findings at the 2010 Technology Innovators Conference in Washington, DC in November.
Parton and Hancock were also previously recognized for the development of a technology-based system to improve instruction in sign language for young deaf children. Their system, called LAMBERT (Language Acquisition Manipulatives Blending Early-childhood Research and Technology) links radio frequency identification (RFID) tags to common objects to help deaf children learn American Sign Language more efficiently.
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