Technology & Education[1][1]

Inclusion - students with disabilities receive the services and supports appropriate to their individual needs within the general education setting Assistive technology device - any item, equipment, or product used to increase, maintain, or improve functional capabilities

Assistive Technology

No tech- The focus of AT is on the student and the student's current individual needs, not on the device or the student's needs in the near or distant future. If the student is not ready to utilize a device, or cannot at the present time use a device, frustration can develop that may lead to AT abandonment. The team must take the time to carefully consider how the student may benefit from an AT device and whether the task can be accomplished successfully without the use of technology.

Assistive Technology

Low tech- are nonelectronic and relatively inexpensive.

They may be as simple

as pencil grips to help students with

fine-motor problems grip pencils

properly; magnifying glasses to

enlarge print or special paper with

raised lines for the visually impaired;

or eating utensils adapted to help a

student self-feed. Light-tech devices

are simple to use and should be considered

after the no-tech devices in the continuum.

Impairment - deterioration: a symptom of reduced quality or strength. Disability- State of being disabled; deprivation or want of ability; absence of competent physical, intellectual, or moral power, means, fitness, and the like. Handicapped - disabled: incapable of functioning as a consequence of injury or illness

Assistive technology -The utilization of technology, strategies, and methods in enabling individuals to master tasks at home, school, work, increase independence, and quality of life—use of computers, toys, controls, equipment, communications, modifications, etc.

Mainstreaming -Integrating a child with

disabilities into a general classroom or

school activities for a portion of the school

day, with supports if needed, to allow him or

her to interact, to the greatest extent

possible, with peers who are not disabled

Joysticks —manipulated by hand,

feet, chin, etc. and used to

control the cursor on screen.

Optical character recognition ( OCR) technology offers

blind and visually impaired persons the capacity to scan

printed text and then speak it back in synthetic speech or

save it to a computer. Little technology exists to interpret

graphics such as line art, photographs,

and graphs into a medium easily

accessible to blind and visually impaired

persons. It also is not yet possible to

convert handwriting, whether script

or block printing, into an accessible medium.

Screen readers are used to verbalize, or "speak,“

everything on the screen including

text, graphics, control buttons,

and menus into a computerized voice

that is spoken aloud. In essence, a

screen reader transforms a graphic

user interface (GUI) into an audio

interface. Screen readers are essential for computer users

who are blind.

Web accessibility refers to the practice of making

websites usable by people of all abilities and

disabilities . When sites are correctly designed,

developed and edited, all users can have equal access

to information and functionality.

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to compress for storage, create

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on your portable device and much more.

In fact, the possibilities are endless

using this powerful audio file converter. Switch Plus audio

file converter is very easy to use. Just add the files you want

to convert to the list, select the format you want to use, and

then click the convert button.

Legal Directives

Technology -related Assistance Act for Individuals with Disabilities (P.L. 100-107) 1988- The AT Act reaffirmed the Federal role of promoting access to AT devices and services for individuals with disabilities. In 1988, Congress passed the original Technology Related Assistance for Individuals with Disabilities Act (Tech Act) to assist States to identify and respond to the AT needs of individuals with disabilities.

Legal Directives (Continued)

Reauthorization of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act in 1997 (P.L. 105-17)- This Act strengthens academic expectations and accountability for the nation's 5.8 million children with disabilities and bridges the gap that has too often existed between what children with disabilities learn and what is required in regular curriculum.

No Child Left Behind 2001 To close the achievement gap with accountability, flexibility, and choice, so that no child is left behind.

Universal Design for Learning

What is it? Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is a framework for designing educational environments that enable all learners to gain knowledge, skills, and enthusiasm for learning. This is accomplished by simultaneously reducing barriers to the curriculum and providing rich supports for learning.

As any educator knows, students come to the classroom with a variety of needs, skills, talents, and interests. For many learners, the typical curriculum—which includes goals, instructional methods, classroom materials, and assessments—is littered with barriers and roadblocks, while supports are relatively few. Faced with an inflexible curriculum, students and teachers are expected to make extraordinary adjustments. UDL turns this scenario around, placing the burden to adapt on the curriculum itself.

Three Parts

Educators, including curriculum and assessment designers, can improve educational outcomes for diverse learners by applying the following principles to the development of goals, instructional methods, classroom materials and assessments.

Provide multiple and flexible methods of presentation to give students with diverse learning styles various ways of acquiring information and knowledge.

Provide multiple and flexible means of expression to provide diverse students with alternatives for demonstrating what they have learned, and

Provide multiple and flexible means of engagement to tap into diverse learners' interests, challenge them appropriately, and motivate them to learn.

How it is used in Technology

The term “universal design” is borrowed from the movement in architecture and product development that calls for curb cuts, automatic doors, video captioning, speakerphones, and other features to accommodate a vast variety of users, including those with disabilities.

Students differ from one another in many ways and present unique learning needs in the classroom setting, yet high standards are important for all students. By incorporating supports for particular students, it is possible to improve learning experiences for everyone, without the need for specialized adaptations down the line. For example, captioned video is of great help to Deaf students—but is also beneficial to students who are learning English, students who are struggling readers, students with attention deficits, and even students working in a noisy classroom.

The advent of digital multimedia, adaptive technologies, the World Wide Web, and other advancements make it possible on a broad scale to individualize education for individual students. Developers and practitioners of UDL apply the inherent flexibility of digital media to individualize educational goals, classroom materials, instructional methods and assessments. Thus, each student has an appropriate point-of-entry into the curriculum—and a pathway towards attainment of educational goals.

Mild disabilities- The first strategy is discipline in Special Education and General Education Settings

Moderate and Severe Disabilities -Help the Student to Belong. The majority of general education teachers advised that part of their role in ensuring successful integration was to help the integrated student feel he or she belonged to the school community and was a member of the class. Teachers proudly mentioned things they had done to that end, such as sending class newsletters home, including the student in the class picture and in daily roll call, putting the student's work on the bulletin board, and making sure other students in the class knew how to interact with him or her.

Disabilities

Physical Disabilities- disabilities

that can affect a person’s ability

to move about, use the arms

and legs, and/or breathe

independently

Sensory disabilities- A sensory disability is blindness, deafness, or a severe vision or hearing impairment.

At-risk Behaviors/Situations- children in school who are “at-risk” for academic failure. Factors include:

Diverse Cultural Background

Limited Background in Speaking English

Poverty

Gifted & Talented Students- terms applied to people with extraordinary abilities, and capable of superior performance, in one or more areas.

Physical Disabilities Strategies

Speech recognition Speech (or voice) recognition is used by people with some physical disabilities or temporary injuries to hands and forearms as an input method in some voice browsers. Applications that have full keyboard support can be used with speech recognition.

Motor Disabilities- To use the Web, people with motor disabilities affecting the hands or arms may use a specialized mouse; a keyboard with a layout of keys that matches their range of hand motion; a pointing device such as a head-mouse, head-pointer or mouth-stick; voice-recognition software; an eye-gaze system; or other assistive technologies to access and interact with the information on Web sites. They may activate commands by typing single keystrokes in sequence with a head pointer rather than typing simultaneous keystrokes ("chording") to activate commands. They may need more time when filling out interactive forms on Web sites if they have to concentrate or maneuver carefully to select each keystroke.

Sensory Disabilities Strategies

Visual notification Visual notification is an alternative feature of some operating systems that allows deaf or hard of hearing users to receive a visual alert of a warning or error message that might otherwise be issued by sound.

Speech disabilities- To use parts of the Web that rely on voice recognition, someone with a speech disability needs to be able to use an alternate input mode such as text entered via a keyboard.

Deafness

To use the Web, many people who are deaf rely on captions for audio content. They may need to turn on the captions on an audio file as they browse a page; concentrate harder to read what is on a page; or rely on supplemental images to highlight context.

Mild Disabilities -Children with mild general learning disabilities (MLD) typically have verbal and performance IQ scores in the 50-70 range, i.e., two to three standard deviations below the population mean. They often have significant limitations both in intellectual functioning and in adaptive behavior as expressed in conceptual, social and practical adaptive skills.

Moderate and Severe Disabilities-Instructional strategies teachers can use with students with mild/moderate disabilities, including: Autism, Blindness/Vision Impairment, Deafness/Hearing Impairment ,Mental Retardation and Physical Disabilities is to recall facts: students restate facts from different activities and stories.

Strategies for Disabilities

Create a Class Web Site —The Web is an excellent way to

communicate with your students and their parents or guardians. You

can include course information, assignments, lecture notes and

presentations, links to interesting sites, challenges, study tools, links to

textbook Web sites, and many other features.

Hands On Activities : As much as possible, think in concrete terms

and provide hands on tasks. This means a child doing

math may require a calculator or counters. The child may need

to tape record comprehension activities instead of writing them.

A child may have to listen to a story being read instead of

reading it him/herself. Always ask yourself if the child should

have an alternate mode or additional learning materials to

address the learning activity.

At-Risk Behaviors

Have Students Create a Multimedia Presentation —Ask students to use various digital media, such as digital video clips, audio clips, and digital photographs to assemble a multimedia presentation. Use your content standards to identify choices that students can make about the project topic. The end product could result in a Web site, PowerPoint® presentation, or other hypermedia product.

Gifted & Talented

Resources

http://specialed.about.com/od/teacherchecklists/p/interventiontip.htm

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