1. The document outlines six steps teachers should follow to determine what assistive technologies would benefit students with disabilities in their classroom. 2. The steps include establishing meetings with parents, identifying student strengths/weaknesses, observing student engagement, brainstorming potential assistive technologies, trial periods, and tweaking plans as needed. 3. The document provides examples of assistive technologies like graphic organizers, preferential seating, sound-reducing materials, calculators, magnifiers, word processors, computers, e-books, and specialized keyboards or keypads.

1. Assistive Technology – Davida Rogers
To determine which assistive technology a student in your classroom will benefit from, an
educator must first determine if assistance is needed at all, and during which activities or parts of
the day. Teachers should follow these first six steps to determine the needs of their classrooms.
Step one: Establish a meeting time with the parents of the student to find out the students
strengths, weaknesses, likes, dislikes and basic abilities; also to basically get on the same page
with the parents.
Step Two: With the help of the parents, decide what the child will be able to participate in
successfully. Share your daily schedule with the parents and they can assist you in the safe
inclusion of their disabled child. The parents will help you to determine where a need will be for
their child.
Step three: In the basic daily routine, identify how the child is engaged. Identify the amount of
their engagement and the value of the engagement for the student. Are they an active participate,
comfortably involved or are they distant and awkward?
Step four: This is the time for brainstorming. If there are any areas where the student needs
additional assistance, this is the time in which to discuss these needs with family and school
staff. Here plans can be made and ideas put into place for the benefit of the student. Ideas can be
written down on a board quickly as they enter the brain of those involved in the meeting.
Step 5: At this time we put the plans that we made into place. This is a trial stage where the
brainstorming is tested.
Step 6: This is the stage for tweaking any plans that we put into place. Anything that did not
quite work out best for the student can be revisited and modified at this stage.
There is a plethora of information to support teachers on the internet. Two of my favorite
resources were:
1. Graphic organizers and outlining programs help students who have trouble organizing
and outlining information as they begin a writing project. This type of program lets a user
"dump" information in an unstructured manner and later helps him organize the
information into appropriate categories and order. By Kristin Stanberry , Marshall
Raskind, Ph.D. Great schools.org

2. Graphic organizers can make a huge difference in the day of a child with a disability.
Large assignments can be broken down into small manageable pieces with a properly
constructed graphic organizer.
1. Teachers agree that one of the most amazing to visit for ideas and inspiration is Pinterest.
There I found a wealth of information on assistive technology ideas. The great thing
about Pinterest is that it has already been tried out and tested by other people in the field.
Although you will want to try out many for yourself, you can get feedback on what other
teachers have done and what has worked for them. On Pinterest I found a link to
Teacherspayteachers.com. Here I found the assistive technology of reward coupons.
These can be used in small increments throughout the day to get a student through a
difficult activity or in larger increments for a child who abstains from a negative behavior
for the desired length of time.
To help the students in my class who have mild disabilities there are so many options out there
for me to choose to help them with. Some of the assistive technologies that I have to choose from
are:
1. Preferential seating – especially for a student who is hard of hearing or has a difficult time
seeing. This could also be used for a child with emotional disorders or challenges.
2. Reverberation Sounds – Students who have hearing problems have a difficult time with
every sound that bounces off of the hard surfaces in the classroom. I can help my hanging
curtains, putting down rugs or adding fabric where I can.
3. Calculators
4. Magnifiers
5. Word Processors
6. Computers and the internet
7. e-Books
8. touch screen computers
9. ear phones
10. glowing and colorful computer keypads
The first thing to do for your students is to follow the 6 steps above to determine the most needed
assistive technology for the different student in your classroom.
Always keep in mind that even if two students have the same disability, they are not the same
person, and may have very different needs, and they may need very different things from you.