Week 6 On-Line Post Assistive Technology

Assistive Technology:

I taught severely mentally and severely multiply impaired students for 7 years from 1987 to 1995.
I used many different assertive technologies. Most of them were different types of communications systems like Wolfs and speech boards. It is so interesting to see how technology has advanced from the homemade pictures boards to the Wolf and now the computerized touch screens. I bet the homemade pictures boards are still used more than the advanced technology systems because of cost and teacher training.

From 1995 to present I teach emotionally impaired, learning disabled, mild cognitively impaired students, hearing impaired students, visually impaired students, physically and otherwise health impaired, ADD, ADHD Students, students with autism and Aspergers syndrome . I currently use hearing amplifier devices, Vista Vibe reading devices with CDs, books on tape, and Writer’s which are replacing Alphasmarts that I have used in the past. I have one student that uses the Writers for all his work. He has poor writing skills and lack of fine motor skills so he types everything into the Writer than transfers work to the computer and prints it from there. One of my two visually impaired students uses a high tech portable magnifier to help with reading. I have received extensive training throughout the years in assistive technology. A good resource that I use is Wayne ATRC. Check out Judy P. Page. http://www.judyphelps.net/index.htm. Our special ed dept. had an in-service from Wayne ATRC. Dr. Tarrant-Parks did a presentation on Premier Literacy Tools. For more information go to http://www.readingmadeez.com.

I learned from the EDU Assignment blog the 1 click answer download from answer.com. I believe this site could help all students. We have so many students that fall into the gray area which means they receive little help. This site is awesome because it fills a gap in student learning. I am going to show it to my new assigned class General Education Introduction to Technology.

UDL
I think the biggest drawback is training for teachers. I don’t see much of this happening and now with budgets cuts professional development will be the first to go and we will receive little training. We just had a professional development on differential instructions and because I teach special ed I had a good understanding as well as training already in this area. I noticed the older staff members appeared to be bored out of their minds with the presenter and the topic. My biggest complaint as a special ed teacher is that (at least at my school) the general ed teachers feel it is the special ed teachers’ responsibility to make accommodations and modifications for the special ed students. This is simply not true. The IEP mandates that all teachers who have contact with the special ed students are responsible for following the student’s IEP and making the accommodations and modifications determined necessary by the IEP team. There are so many gray area students out there that could benefit from UDL. Many teachers feel it is unfair for special education students to receive modifications and accommodations because the other students don’t receive them. If they could see that all students learn differently and it is our responsibilities as teachers to help students learn, our test scores would go up and students would enjoy learning more. I think all teachers should read “Classroom Instruction that Works” by Robert J. Marzano, Debra J. Pickering, and Jane E. Polluck .
It is research-based strategies for increasing student achievement. On Tuesday, December 15, 2009, I am presenting a New Teacher In-Service on Accommodations in the classroom for special ed students. This in- service is open to all teachers but is mainly for the new teachers in the district. I wish it included older teachers in the district because our new teachers have a better understanding of the needs of special ed students than the older teachers. Check out my livebinder for this training. I added some of the links from the assistive technology part on the EDU Blog. http://livebinders.com/play/play?id=4709