What I have learned:
Throughout this course I have been introduced and reminded of the many different forms of assistive technology. This course has broadened my understanding of these tools and the many different uses of them. I have learned that these tools are accessible to everyone and if I as an educator can make them available to my students they can become more successful and less stressed and anxious about their work. Throughout the course I was reminded that it does not matter how students present their learning/knowledge. It just matters if they have learned. I learned how to use some of the assistive technology programs so that I can teach my students to use them.
My ‘Aha’ moment:
After one of our online meetings, I was thinking about one of my students this year. He has a lot of trouble with written output and is reluctant to use technology to overcome this. He does not want to stand out and look different from his peers. I was thinking that if I had just introduced some of the tools to the whole class, that maybe he would be more willing to use them. That we wouldn’t have the fight that we have right now to get him to use some of the programs that would help him.
Goals:
- To share the assistive technologies with the staff at my school. Next year at our school we have 3 6/7 classes and I am teaching one of them. I would love to have all three teachers on the same page about the different tools that are available for students to use
- To use many of the different programs with my class more. I want to model how to use some of the programs for my students. I want to introduce my students to things like simple Wikipedia and the various different tools to help them with written output like read&write or talktyper.