Monday, February 20, 2012
Assistive Technology
I have sure seen a lot of AT resources that I never knew existed from doing the work from this part of the class. I have bookmarked so many of the sites and plan to weed through them little by little. After seeing so many of the available resources, I feel as though I lack as a teacher in the area of special education. There is so much more that I can do for all of my students. Even something as simple as using the auto summarize feature in Microsoft Word to help stuggling readers could really make a difference. I guess I tended to think of assistive technology as being specific devices that students could carry around with them. I totally lacked in the knowledge of all of the other software that is available. I look at it as a learning opportunity and a chance to make myself a better teacher. I am actually looking forward to the interviewing of an assistive technology person in our AT office. I hope to pass along my new found information to other teachers at my school.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Trish,
ReplyDeleteI felt the same way. I really lack a lot of knowledge in the entire special education field. I am also looking forward to our assistive technology specialist too. I am going to suggest that there be professional development opportunities for teachers in this field since there are none in our district. I am also going to suggest our district start what Lilit has in her district. She described it this way: "Once a year, the PTA at my school organizes an ability week when different people with disabilities come to us and teach our students what is it like to have a disability and what kind of technology do they use to help them. We have met a girl who was visually impaired and who was using a special voice activated keyboard. She would type on it and the device would read the information she typed back to her." Lilit mentioned this in our Week 4 conference area.
Unfortunately, I think that special education is being pushed to the back burner in terms of funding. In a time when funding and information about technology should be at an all time high, we are having conversations about how there is not much in the way of professional development for assistive technology. It has been very interesting to see in this class the different types of assistive technology that people are using, that I have never even heard of! Hopefully, we will be able to stress the importance of these technologies in our districts, and help special education pick up!
ReplyDelete