Chair: Shirley McNaughton

Description: Instructor Training shares existing training resources and develops training resources. Teaching & Learning Materials Materials shares existing teaching and learning resources and develops teaching and learning resources.

Update: Pilot Adventure in International information exchange! A parent who is instructing her child in Bliss has been introduced electronically to a speech pathologist in a different Canadian city and a Bliss specialist in Finland to provide assistance with teaching ideas and materials. These distance supporters await news of this Canadian 4-year-old’s progress! Teaching Materials Digitized books, a story book teaching approach, is being used with two six-year-olds, and power point slides await the activation of the Hub to make these materials available for downloading from the web. Further contributions are invited. Instructional Programs Bliss 101 and Bliss 201, now on the web, and await the activation of the Hub as a meeting place for discussion among instructors learning Bliss. Contacts for other Training courses will be listed. New Project Beginning A series of animated power point slides to teach various Bliss strategies and grammar capabilities has been funded in Canada by the Ontario Federation for Cerebral Palsy. The slide series will be produced by 8 Bliss users and alumni to share their ideas of strategies that work when you are learning Bliss! When completed, the series will be downloadable from the Teaching and Learning Materials Hub.

Technology Hub

Chair: Annalu Waller

Description: Technology coordinates the development of technological resources and standards to support the work of hubs, the use of Bliss, and the communication infrastructure of the worldwide Bliss community.

Update: Web Development Work is proceeding on a web infrastructure for BCI. An MSc student at Dundee is developing a content management system which will support the work of BCI. The technology chair is also working with the communications hub on the public face of the BCI website. Mailing Lists We are indebted to Michael Everson for hosting temporary email lists BCUK. We now have the lists below at Blissymbolics.org – if anyone needs to have anyone added, please email Annalu: Community@Blissymbolics.org Technology@Blissymbolics.org We are able to set up other lists very easily and envisage one for each hub. Projects There are several for working on technology projects: Font Development – Michael Everson has received funding from BC(Canada) and BC(UK) to complete a Bliss font for use in internal BCI development work. We still require further funding to complete a freely accessible font. Bliss graphics – we now have a set of png files available for use by developers. Open Source Discussion – Mats Lundälv is chairing a group addressing copyright issues for the board.