Integrating Assistive Technology

Oh, how I wish we had the luxury of an assistive technology services department, like Fairfax County Public Schools has, so we could better serve special-needs students with available technology. Two members of that department, Jenn Regardie and Heather Thompson, get to focus on finding ways to help special-education teachers use technology effectively. They develop a specialized AT collaboration plan with each school based on its resources and students; when teachers aren't sure what they need, the department holds technology fairs to present options. From these collaboration plans, the department realized that teachers most needed help turning passive instruction into active learning, which is more beneficial for most special-needs populations. But I can't see why their applications wouldn't be enjoyed by other students as well. Here are just a few of their ideas (even more can be found at the department's Web site):

PowerPoint: Too often, students dread PowerPoint presentations because they are nothing more than jazzed-up lectures. Regardie and Thompson offered suggestions for using them as guided review activities. For example, a PowerPoint can be turned into a cloze activity by copying the original PowerPoint, replacing key terms with blanks, then printing out a slide map for students to fill in as the teacher goes over concepts.

Inspiration: This program often is used as a graphic-organizer creator, but it also can become a Webquest without having to worry about html coding. Simply take your typical graphic organizer and add notes containing links and instructions on what information to find there. Even better, students can answer questions about the links, then the diagram can be switched to outline form to act as a concise study guide.

Portables: FCPS uses a variety of student-response systems, such as the Neo2, to aid with classroom management. The reduction in grading time for teachers allows them to give more individualized instruction to students. The devices aren't cheap ($239 a piece), so we won't be buying any soon, but we have been looking at purchasing Senteo, a more basic system to use with SmartBoards. Until then, though, there are many resources online, such as book companion sites, that students can access to answer questions and to send scores automatically to an instructor's e-mail. Here is an example from a psychology textbook. I plan to use a similar site for grammar reinforcement next year.

All three of these technologies are available at WBAIS. It seems a waste that we are underutilizing what is available to us. Certainly, understaffing is an issue at such a small school -- we will never have an assistive technology services department -- but we can make an effort. I know it's crazy to suggest more time for planning, but along with vertical and horizontal planning, we might want to consider, uh, "diagonal" planning, where grade-level or department teams meet with resource and ESL staff to evaluate technologies that could help all students, but especially those with special needs through, dare I say it, differentiation.