To make the strange familiar: And to make the familiar strange

Through the making of courses in Rehabilitation engineering entirely over the Internet, Certec has pedagogically achieved three things. The most obvious is that our education has become more accessible for disabled students. Not so obvious was the effects that came from making the familiar strange when we were transferring to the net: It was impossible to invent a ‘net-pedagogy’ by doing anything less than viewing the old pedagogy in the old ‘classroom-media’ as if it was a stranger. This made us aware of aspects and perspectives we had never before seen and we could make instant use of these new insights. Finally: we have never before been able to create the range of possibilities, that was now given over the net, for the students to meet disabled persons under extreme conditions. To them this was an eye-opener, one way to ‘make the strange familiar’. Another was that they, as non-disabled, were able to use computer-based assistive technology and through this could get an insight into the difference that this could make for the disabled person. In our paper we will present an elaboration of the pedagogical an technical concept, its background, its observed effects and our plans for the future.