Research conducted by the National Center for Supported eText (NCSeT) is guided by the Center’s Technical Review Board in collaboration with program officers from the Department of Education and Center staff. The Technical Review Board meets face to face annually at one or more national research conferences. In 2006, the NCSeT Technical Review Board met at the annual conference of the American Educational Research Association in San Francisco. In 2007, the NCSeT is holding two meetings of the Technical Review Board; one at the American Educational Research Association (AERA) in Chicago (April 11) and one at the Council for Exceptional Children (CEC) Conference in Louisville (April 20). NCSeT staff use multiple forms of telecommunications to stay in touch at all other times of the year. Below is an abbreviated description of each member of this board.
- Randall Boone, Ph.D., is Professor of Educational Computing and Technology and Interim Associate Dean in the College of Education, University of Nevada Las Vegas. Dr. Boone has served for the past six years as Co-editor of the Journal of Special Education Technology, a publication of the Technology and Media Division of the Council for Exceptional Children. Dr. Boone holds a Ph.D. in Educational Computing from the University of Oregon and has been involved in the research and practice of educational technology for students with disabilities since 1987. Dr. Boone has successfully authored more than 50 publications and has been principal investigator on four U.S. Department of Education grants. He is a frequent panel reviewer for the Office of Special Education Programs.
- Dave Edyburn, Ph.D., is a Professor in the Department of Exceptional Education at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. His research and teaching interests focus on the use of technology to enhance teaching, learning, and performance. He has written extensively on the use of assistive technology for students with mild disabilities and has particular interests in the accessibility of text. He is a past president of the Technology and Media (TAM) Division of the Council for Exceptional Children as well as the Special Education Technology Special Interest Group (SETSIG) of the International Society of Technology in Education. He has published extensively in the field of special education technology and is one of three editors of the Handbook of Special Education Technology Research and Practice. He is currently Editor of Remedial and Special Education and is Co-Principal Investigator of the federally-funded research center, The Assistive Technology Outcome Measurement Systems (ATOMS) Project, conducting research on assistive technology outcome measurement and creating measurement instruments.
- Karen Erickson, Ph.D., is the Director of the Center for Literacy and Disability Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She holds a Ph.D. in Special Education and Literacy Studies from UNC-CH. She is a former teacher of children with significant disabilities. Karen is the 2004 recipient of the Educator of the Year Award from the National Down Syndrome Conference and the International Augmentative and Alternative Communication Society’s Distinguished Lectureship Award. Knowledgeable in literacy, assistive and instructional technologies, augmentative communication, and the learning characteristics of children with significant disabilities, she is in great demand as a presenter, consultant, and program developer. Her assessment and intervention strategies are described in numerous journal articles and book chapters.
- Larry Goldberg is the Director of Media Access at WGBH and oversees the National Center for Accessible Media (NCAM), The Caption Center, and Descriptive Video Service. Mr. Goldberg has been deeply involved in the national effort to ensure that the design and implementation of the nation's information systems address the needs of people with disabilities. He was a pioneer in the development of the emerging captioning system for digital television in the U.S and served as the founding chair of the Working Group of the Electronic Industries Association, responsible for the design of a captioning system for the country's Advanced Television system. Mr. Goldberg was awarded a patent in 1996 for "Rear Window™," the first closed captioning system for movie theaters and theme parks. Mr. Goldberg served on the Federal Access Board's Electronic and Information Technology Access Advisory Committee that established rules for federal compliance with Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act. He presents widely at conferences and consults for government and media and technology companies on access issues and is a member of numerous advisory boards. He also currently serves on the Federal Communications Commission's Technological Advisory Council and on the FCC's Consumer Advisory Committee.
- Chuck Hitchcock oversees software development, technology innovation, and website development as CAST’s Chief Education Technology Officer. He is the chief developer of many of CAST’s educational and tool software programs and contributes as a software development team member for internal projects and on contracts with publishers and other organizations. Mr. Hitchcock is currently Project Director for two OSEP cooperative agreements: (1) the “National Center on Accessing the General Curriculum” and (2) the new “NIMAS Technical Assistance Center.”
- Michael Kamil, Ph.D., is Professor of Education at Stanford University. He is Chair of the Reading Framework Planning Committee for the 2009 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) He is also a member of the National Literacy Panel for Language Minority Youth and serves on the Adolescent Literacy Advisory Board for The Alliance for Excellent Education. He is a member of the Carnegie Corporation Advisory Council on Advancing Adolescent Literacy. He was a member of the National Reading Panel and the RAND Reading Study Group. He currently serves on the Technical Advisory Boards for the National Evaluation of Educational Technology and the National Accessible Reading Assessments Projects. His research explores the effects of computer technologies on literacy and learning and the acquisition of literacy in first and second languages. Current research projects are funded by the California Commission for Post-Secondary Education, The Center for School Choice at Vanderbilt, and the Mid-Atlantic Regional Educational Laboratory.
- George Kerscher is Senior Officer of Accessible Information at Recording For the Blind & Dyslexic (RFB&D) in the USA, Secretary General for the DAISY Consortium, Chairperson of the Board of Directors for the Open eBook Forum (OeBF), and Co-chair of the Steering Council of the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI). George Kerscher is dedicated to developing technology to make information not only accessible, but fully functional in the hands of persons who are blind and disabled. He himself is blind, and started to develop computer-based information technology in 1987. He has proven to be a tireless advocate of structured markup, such as XML, in information systems that simultaneously serve both the mainstream population and persons with disabilities. George Kerscher coined the term "print disabled" to describe people who cannot effectively read print because of a visual, physical, perceptual, developmental, cognitive, or learning disability. He believes and advocates that in the Information Age, access to information is a fundamental human right. He also believes that properly designed information systems can make all information accessible to all people, and is working to push the evolving technologies in that direction.
- Elizabeth A. Lahm, Ph.D., is the Director of the Wisconsin Assistive Technology Initiative, which is a statewide technical assistance project funded by the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction. Before moving to Wisconsin in 2003 she taught in classrooms for students with severe disabilities for eight years in Minnesota and California. She received her Bachelors degree from St. Cloud State University in Minnesota and her Masters degree at the California State University at Los Angeles. In 1988 Liz completed her Ph.D. in Special Education Technology at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. She has directed assistive technology research projects in for-profit and university settings. Most recently she was the coordinator of the assistive technology graduate program at the University of Kentucky. She was also Principal Investigator of several research and development projects in assistive technology, both within the Department of Special Education and Rehabilitation Counseling and the Interdisciplinary Human Development Institute at the University of Kentucky. Liz is a RESNA certified Assistive Technology Practitioner.
- Don Leu, Ph.D., is the John and Maria Neag Endowed Chair in Literacy and Technology and holds a joint appointment in Educational Psychology and Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Connecticut. He is also President of the National Reading Conference. A graduate of Michigan State, Harvard, and Berkeley, Don’s work focuses on the new forms of reading comprehension and writing required to read, write, and learn with Internet technologies and instructional practices that prepare students for these new skills. He has more than 100 research publications and sixteen books and he has given keynote addresses in Europe, Australia, Asia, South America, and North America. He is currently editing the Handbook of Research on New Literacies (Erlbaum) with Julie Coiro, Michele Knobel, and Colin Lankshear. His home page is at: http://www.sp.uconn.edu/~djleu/
- Richard E. Mayer, Ph.D., is Professor of Psychology at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) where he has served since 1975. Dr. Mayer's research concerns cognition, instruction, and technology, including multimedia learning environments. He is interested in how to present information in ways that help people understand, such as determining how illustrations affect how people learn from scientific text, how people learn scientific explanations from computer-based animation and narration, and how people learn to solve problems from computer games, simulations, and virtual reality. Dr. Mayer is past-President of the Division of Educational Psychology of the American Psychological Association, former editor of the Educational Psychologist and former co-editor of Instructional Science, former Chair of the UCSB Department of Psychology, and the year 2000 recipient of the E. L. Thorndike Award for career achievement in educational psychology. He is on the editorial boards of 10 journals mainly in educational psychology. He is the author of 18 books and more than 250 articles and chapters, including Learning and Instruction (2003), Multimedia Learninge-Learning and the Science of Instruction (2003), with Ruth Clark.
- David Reinking, Ph.D., is a Professor of Education at Clemson University. He is widely recognized in the field for his work investigating how digital forms of reading and writing affect literacy. From 1992-1997, he was a principal investigator of the National Reading Research Center, funded by the Office of Educational Research and Improvement, US Office of Education. From 1994-2001, he was the editor of the Journal of Literacy Research, a peer-reviewed research journal published by the National Reading Conference. He is currently the co-editor of Reading Research Quarterly, a highly regarded peer-reviewed research journal published by the International Reading Association. Professor Reinking's publications have appeared in all of the field's major outlets including Reading Research Quarterly, Journal of Reading Behavior (now Journal of Literacy Research), The Reading Teacher, and the Journal of Reading (now Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy). He was also lead editor for the Handbook of Literacy and Technology (Erlbaum, 1998.)
- Heidi Silver-Pacuilla, Ph.D., is a Research Analyst at the American Institutes for Research (AIR) where she works on both the National Center for Technology Innovation (NCTI) and the National Reporting Standards (NRS) Project. For NCTI, she contributes to content development about assistive technology practice and research, provides coordination with commissioned experts of product development, and coordinates the creation of video dialogues with product and research innovators. She is the lead author of NCTI’s publication entitled A Review of Technology-Based Approaches for Reading Instruction: Tools for Researchers and Vendors (Silver-Pacuilla, Ruedel, & Mistrett, 2004). Dr. Silver-Pacuilla’s role on the NRS project is to provide technical assistance to states on the development and implementation of evaluation instruments, policies, and practices that support higher quality data collection and management. She has over 12 years experience with literacy learning, research, and professional development and is particularly interested in how best practices can be provided and updated through a digital teaching and learning environment. Dr. Silver-Pacuilla completed her doctorate in 2003 at the University of Arizona in adult literacy and learning disabilities and a fellowship from NIDRR in 2004 focused on assistive technology for adult students with learning disabilities.
- William (Skip) Stahl, M.S., is CAST’s Director of Technical Assistance and one of the founders of CAST. Mr. Stahl chaired the National File Format Technical Panel, an initiative of the U.S. Department of Education Office of Special Education Programs and the National Center for Accessing the General Curriculum. Mr. Stahl directs CAST’s Universal Learning Center, an initiative to transform K -12 textbooks into specialized accessible formats for students with print disabilities. Mr. Stahl has gained national recognition for his training efforts using the UDL model; several states, including Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Texas, have hired Mr. Stahl as a consultant to help direct their process of incorporating educational technology to teach students with disabilities. He is the featured presenter in the video “Skip Stahl on Technology and Students with Special Needs”, one of the five-part award-winning series, “Technology in Today’s Classrooms” produced by Canter & Associates. He contributes a regular column to Counterpoint, a quarterly publication of the National Association of Directors of Special Education (NASDSE), and is an advisory board member on a number of K-12 and postsecondary projects focused on Universal Design for Learning. He received an M.S. from Bank Street College of Education.