Presenters

More presenter information will be added as soon as it becomes available.

John Anderson (USA)

John works as the Mainstream Adjustment Counselor for the Mainstream Center at Clarke School for the Deaf/Center for Oral Education. He grew up with a progressive hearing loss and now uses a cochlear implant. He earned his MA in counseling psychology from Antioch New England Graduate School in Keene NH. He is a Licensed Mental Health Counselor in Massachusetts. He works primarily with students in the mainstream who are struggling to succeed either academically and/or socially. He frequently gives workshops on experience of hearing loss for students in mainstream schools and is the author of a children's book on adjustment to hearing loss called My Hearing Loss and Me: We Get Along Most of the Time.

Karen Bontempo (Australia)

Karen has practiced as an Australian Sign Language (Auslan) interpreter for nearly 20 years and has worked as an interpreter educator since 1996. Karen is an examiner for the National Accreditation Authority for Translators and Interpreters and serves on the national board of the Australian Sign Language Interpreters’ Association. Karen holds academic qualifications in a number of disciplines including clinical psychology, education, and linguistics. She is a member of the Centre for Translation and Interpreting Research at Macquarie University in Australia, where she is also a PhD (Linguistics) candidate, researching factors that may be predictive of interpreter performance.

Mervyn Hyde (Australia)

Merv is an Adjunct Professor and Principal Research Fellow at the Faculty of Education at Griffith University
Queensland, Australia and is the Director of the Centre for Applied Studies in Deafness.

Geoff Minshull (Technical Support)

Geoff works for Direct Learn Services. He has been in further education since 1983, mainly in the UK, during which time he has worked with a wide range of businesses and organisations. He has also worked and lectured extensively in Southern Africa, Central America, and the USA. Geoff has been involved in online education for many years, and has worked with LEAs, colleges and universities, as well as national educational organisations. He has been running online conferences and other online events since 2001. His first degree was from Sussex University in Economics, and he has an MSc from Loughborough University in Computers and Education.

Judith Mole (Conference chair)

Judith founded Direct Learn Services in 2001 after working in education since 1992. A graduate of the University of Derby, she started working with Deaf students while at college and has since managed support units for Deaf students both at Sheffield Hallam University and at the University of Wolverhampton, where she was also a member of the board of governors. She has worked both in the higher and further education sector. She has managed a number of projects for the University of Wolverhampton which created online BSL/English dictionaries for art, science and engineering as well as a BSL/English dictionary for ICT for the DfES Standards Unit. She has written a number of publications and books on supporting Deaf students. Judith has a first degree in Drama, Film and Television Studies as well as a PG Cert in TESOL from Sheffield Hallam University.