Assistive/ Adaptive technologies“Technology is just a tool. In terms of getting the kids working together and motivating them, the teacher is the most important.” –Bill Gates

Created by: Mary Webb

Assistive technology are tools for exceptional children to succeed and become involved in a general education setting.

The national education Association reports “that as of 2004, nearly every general education classroom across the country includes students with physical and/or learning disabilities. Because of exciting new technologies, many of those students now are able to work right beside their classmates.”

Photo credit: Division of diversity and community engagement

Mary Webb

As a Teacher..You should be aware of all the possibilities that a child with exceptionalities would bring to the classroom.One example of this would be a student with difficulty processing and remembering spoken language. The proper assistive technologies need to be given to this child in order for the child to succeed. Some technologies for this would be: The paper based computer pen- This adaptive technology allows students to take notes and record there teacher at the same time. This would be extremely helpful in the sense that students would be able to go home and listen to the lecture as many times as they needed to, to fully grasp the meaning.

Mary Webb

Another technology would be a FM listening system. This would allow the teacher to speak directly into a child's ear by wearing a microphone. This child wears the ear piece which ultimately enables the student to focus directly on the teachers voice.

Mary Webb

The video below illustrates this

Another kind of exceptional student that a future educator might face is a student who has extreme learning disabilities in math.Some Assistive Technologies that could greatly benefit a student would be:Electronic math worksheets. Some students have a hard time aligning and keeping math problems organized. This technology can help a student organize, align and work through math problems on a computer screen. Keeping multiplication, addition, and subtraction problems aligned when solving is extremely important for correct answers.

Mary Webb

Another technology would be a talking calculator. Some students simply have a hard time accurately imputing information in the calculator. This calculator has a built-in speech synthesizer that reads aloud each number, symbol, or operation key. This would greatly benefit a student so they could hear exactly what they are imputing into the calculator.

The video below illustrates this

Mary Webb

Along with students who struggle severely with math there are also students who struggle just as much in reading.

Audio books and publication is an example that would greatly benefit a student.

Audio books are simply a recording of a book which allows playback units. Students are able to read at there own pace and can bring home this device to better understand the content.

Mary Webb

Another tool could be the optical character recognition . This tool allows for any text to be scanned into a handheld unit or computer. Once the text is scanned it can be read aloud.

Mary Webb

There are all kinds of exceptionalities a child could bring to the classroom. As an educator the best way to be prepared is to keep an open mind and educate yourself on all the ways you can help the child. The technology world is growing rapidly therefore, there is some sort of accommodation to meet every students need!

Mary Webb

APA:Forest, K. (2012, Dec 14). Assistive/adaptive technology in the classroom. Retrieved from http://communities.newteachercenter.org/community-commons/wiki/AssistiveAdaptiveTechnologyintheClassroomW2013

Bridge Multimedia. (2005, Aug 9). Education world. Retrieved from http://www.educationworld.com/a_tech/tech/tech220.shtml

Kaskind, M. (n.d.). Assistive technology for kids with ld: An overview. Retrieved from http://www.greatschools.org/special-education/assistive-technology/702-assistive-technology-for-kids-with-learning-disabilities-an-overview.gs

Mary Webb