Assistive TechnologyA Fast Look at What’s Available

Gayle UnderwoodTechnology Integration Consultant

gunderwood@alleganaesa.org

Resources for A.T in Allegan County

Handouts: List of AT for StudentsAT MandateConsideration ChecklistResource Guidehttp://www.alleganaesa.org/spedforms/

Ongoing research identifies key factors in the successful use of AT in educational settings:

• student and family goals and values form the basis of the student's educational programs

• the acquisition and use of AT is tied directly to student academic and personal goals

• students, family and educators (including teachers, therapists and instructional assistants) work as a team to select, obtain, implement and monitor AT

• (Todis, 1997)

Ongoing research identifies key factors in the successful use of AT in educational settings:

• communication about all aspects of the students school program is frequent and honest

• devices and equipment that are worn or outgrown are replaced. Those that are not meeting student needs are modified, replaced or abandoned, either temporarily or permanently

• both major and minor glitches are regarded as inevitable but solvable problems are dealt with quickly and systematically by the team.

• (Todis, 1997)

AT can be organized into 4 different categories

Communication

Position/Mobility Learning

Manipulation

Communication

Manipulation

Position/Mobility

Learning

WordQ

• What is WordQ?• You can use WordQ along with any standard writing software

(e.g., Microsoft Word, WordPad, Notepad, or Outlook). When you type a letter, WordQ predicts what you might want to write and displays a list of correctly spelled words from which you can choose. When you see the word you want, you can choose it with a single keystroke or with the mouse. If you need help deciding which word to use, each word can be read aloud before you make a selection. When you’ve finished typing your sentence, WordQ can read it back to you. Then you can hear if there are any mistakes such as missing words or punctuation. Often you can hear mistakes that you can’t see.

SpeakQ• What is SpeakQ?• SpeakQ can do everything that WordQ does, plus you

can write by speaking. At any time you have the choice of typing with the keyboard, using word prediction, or speaking straight into your text. Speech recognition and word prediction are integrated to enhance the effectiveness of each other. You can train SpeakQ to recognize your speech using texts provided that match your reading level or you can write your own training texts. An innovative training interface makes training simple. Just listen to the computer speak and repeat after it!

Reading Pen

• The Reading Pen is a portable talking dictionary and thesaurus. Students can scan unfamiliar words and look up their definitions. If they don’t understand a word in the definition, the definition of that word can be looked up as well.

• Some skills that the student must have to use the pen are: – fine motor skills-there are small buttons to press to move

through the dictionary and thesaurus– matching skills-students need to check to see if the word

scanned in correctly (Does the word on the pen match the word that you scanned?)

Intellikeys Keyboard

• The intellikeys keyboard is an alternate keyboard that can be used with students who are just learning how to use a computer. It has larger keys and can be customized so that the student has access to only the keys they need. For example, if they are using a Math program, they could use an overlay that only had large numbers on it.

• Some skills that a student must have in order to use the keyboard:

--None—the keyboard can be customized to fit every need (physically as well as cognitively)

The Writer

The Writer is a Low Cost, Easy to Use Instructional Tool — Perfect for:

• Keyboard Instruction and Writing Support • Title One Literacy Development • Special Needs

Why the Writer Gets Results• It’s easy. Press On and go • A focused Work Environment means no games, no internet

and no distractions. All attention is focused on learning. • http://www.writerlearning.com/writer_features.php

Kindle

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00154JDAI/?tag=googhydr-20&hvadid=3254143881&ref=pd_sl_177pa6cuyf_e

Web Resources

• There are so many web resources that you need to organize them.

• Use protopage or Del.icio.us

Go To • http://protopage.com/gunderwood