Project CONNECT
University of Oregon
Eugene, Oregon, USA

Contact person: Carolyn Knox-Quinn cknoxq@oregon.uoregon.edu

Project CONNECT (COntent-area-literacy via Networked Notetaking for Exceptional Children and Teachers) at the University of Oregon's Center for Electronic Studying is federally funded by a research grant. It implements and evaluates a wirelessly networked, collaborative, in-class notetaking support service for secondary school students who have learning disabilities, hearing impairments, or upper-mobility dysfunction.

Project members train notetakers to use our networked notetaking system to take notes in tandem with a disabled student during a regular education class. Two laptop computers link wirelessly through infrared networking devices and run synchronous groupware (Aspects) in a collaborative writing mode to provide a system that allows notetaker and student to view each other's notes simultaneously while taking their own notes on the same screen. When class ends, the student saves both sets of notes -- the student's and the notetaker's -- for review and study later. The hardware used in Project CONNECT primarily consists of Macintosh's PowerBook, a portable, battery-operated laptop computer, and Photonics' Cooperative, an infrared networking device that plugs into the computer's printer and ADB ports. To accomplish the task of in-class notetaking, notetakers and students use Groupware's Aspects, collaborative word-processing software that allows two or more people working on different computers to take notes simultaneously without interruption.

Go to index of project descriptions posted from May 1997 to June 2000