Computer Skills Development Program
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About the Program/Contact
"Cheers & Jeers"
The Wayside Web Site
The Sun Newspaper Article
I always enjoy getting an e-mail from Doug.  I have spoken to the other members of the family and they also enjoy getting e-mails.  I believe that being able to e-mail has not only opened another avenue of communication but it has also bolstered his self-confidence in being able to say that he too his on the “information highway.”  Thank you for all your good work with Doug.
THE PLAIN DEALER
COMPUTER-SKILLS PROGRAM OPENS NEW WORLD TO MENTALLY DISABLED
Sunday, January 01, 2006
Scott Stephens
Plain Dealer Reporter

The printer is out of paper, and Tim Caskey is about to catch hell.

"You're out of paper, old man!" Harvey Graham snarls in mock anger. "Tim's getting old. He can't remember things anymore."

Caskey chuckles and shakes his head. He's used to the abuse.

In fact, he kind of likes it.

The good-natured banter is all part of Caskey's 4-year-old Computer Skills Development Program at Our Lady of the Wayside, a nonprofit agency that provides services to more than 180 people with developmental disabilities such as cerebral palsy and mental retardation.

The program teaches mentally disabled adults basic skills, including writing and sending e-mail and navigating the Internet. Touch-screen technology, jumbo mouses and extra-big keyboards help even the most severely disabled claim a small piece of the information superhighway.

More than two dozen adults from across Northeast Ohio travel to Avon on Tuesday or Thursday nights or Saturday afternoons to work on their typing skills, make holiday decorations for their group homes, correspond with friends and family or visit their favorite celebrity Web site.

The class represents a crack through which they can temporarily escape their disabilities and see the light of the outside world.

"We have a waiting list," says Caskey, a special-education teacher by day at Cleveland's Audubon School and the sole instructor of the computer-skills program since its inception. "It's important to them that their housemates know that they're in this class. It's got a certain cachet to it."
No one can recall a program exactly like Caskey's class - in Ohio or anywhere else.

"We're not aware of anything like it," says Terry Davis, president and chief executive of Our Lady of the Wayside. "It's unique, and we've been very pleased with the results."

Truth is, the uniqueness of the program is also a sort of disadvantage. Foundations and other potential funding sources don't know how to categorize the class.

Is it an adult special-needs program? A technology program? An education program?

It's unusual, and that's what's made it difficult to find foundation help," Caskey says.

But with donations from the Stocker and Nordson Corp. foundations, the program has maintained and slowly grown. There are now 28 students.
The genesis of the program is as unusual as the class itself. Five years ago, Caskey was moonlighting at a Micro Center computer store, teaching a free beginners class that the retailer offered to its customers.

A man in the class looked as if he would rather be anywhere else in the world. Caskey figured the guy's wife forced him to attend."The guy was just bored to tears," Caskey recalls. "I thought, 'Man, I'm losing this guy.' "
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