AT & UDL - 2 Sides of the Same Coin - Article Review

This article steps forward to distinguish the differences between Assistive Technology & Universal Design for Learning. Both are used to make learning more accessible for all students, but the article points out some key differences between the two.
Assistive Tech: assistive technology is a personalized approach to education, which can help individuals overcome barriers in the environment & those that they encounter along their journey of education. The author states continuously that it is to be used for students with disabilities, which I will speak to furthermore shortly.
Universal Design for Learning: UDL has a more broad goal in mind; to attack the education system from a curricular level, in order to make it accessible for all. This way, it wouldn't have to be adapted to each individual student that has a disability. It would anticipate the potential needs ahead of time. It brings to mind a cartoon that was discussed in our Introduction to Disability Studies class (below). In it, it shows a gentleman shoveling steps to get into a school, rather than shoveling the ramp, which would make it accessible to all. We should approach education in a manner that makes it accessible for all students equally, right from the start, rather than reacting to the circumstances as we encounter them.

The authors perspectives on AT make it seem as though it is only needed for those diagnosed with either a physical or learning disability. However, if we are to look at a classroom from a truly UDL perspective, I believe we should be anticipating that all students, diagnosed disability or not, may at some point require AT to further their learning process.

Overall, this was a very helpful article in defining what AT and UDL are, and how they can work together in schools to provide the best learning experiences for all students.

Assistive Tech - Day 4 Takeaways

Today in class, we focused mostly on the writing process. It is a process that most of us complete on a daily basis, yet give little thought to the enormous process that it is. 

Before we got into that, the first thing we did was watch a video on YouTube on a lady who was paralyzed, who communicated with the outside world via a program called Switch Access. To work the AT, there was a switch taped to the outside of her jaw, which she was able to activate using her jaw muscles. This switch was linked to her computer, which then gave her the ability to communicate with her husband, friends and family. She completed daily activities, such as ordering food & clothing, all via this switch. It was an incredible thing to watch. This woman would've been completely isolated without this technology. It was amazing!

 After this, we mapped out our own version of the writing process, using a template of writing to the school board to ask for funding for iPads. To map out my ideas, I used the Sticky Notes app for iPad. It was super easy to use, a great way to organize my thoughts, and best of all, FREE! This would be a really great app for students to use to map out a writing piece & I would definitely use it again in the future.

My left-handed Summer - summary

 Afterwards, we put ourselves in the shoes of someone who had difficulty putting pen to paper. Barb had us use our non-dominant hand to write a sentence about what we were going to do this summer. It was extremely difficult to form the letters, which lead to me getting frustrated very quickly. I had more that I wanted to write, but didn't bother because it was so much work to put my thoughts down. I think that this was a great activity to show how useful AT would be for these students who have difficulty writing. There are so many great options available for them to use. And also, we have to remember...what is it we are assessing with a task? Are we assessing their ability to form letters properly, or do we want them to show us what they know? I think in 99% of the cases, whether or not they can form their words properly is not what we are assessing.

The last activity we completed today was forming our own word art (using Wordle) to show some cool apps that could help with the writing process.  Tim & I were given the task of finding apps & extensions in the Google Chrome Store, which had a ton of great apps. It was cool to see the other programs that everyone else came up with. There are so many options that educators can take advantage of, no matter which platform they have access to!

Assistive Tech - Day 3 Takeaways

We spent a lot of time on Day 3 discussing and playing around with Read & Write for Google, an app that can be used in Google Chrome. 

Read & Write for Chrome is a really cool support app that can help people with a number of tasks. Some supports that it offer include being able to highlight passages in multiple colors, which would be very helpful with students organizing their work or taking notes. It also allows you to highlight a passage and have it read aloud to you, which is amazing for those students not reading at grade level. That is also very handy for the EAL population, which is growing rapidly in our community. It also gives a large number of different voices for the read aloud portion, which is a really nice feature.

This screenshot shows some of the cool features that Read & Write for Google has to offer!

Another amazing feature for this app is the ability to build a word list right in the document that you're reading. This would've been so handy years ago during high school & undergrad, when there were so many vocabulary words to memorize. For students who struggle with organization, this would be extremely beneficial. It also has a dictionary & picture dictionary feature, that is also very useful.

One drawback to the app is that it can only be used while in Google Chrome, which makes it usable for laptops & Chrome Books, but not on an iPad. That being said, in the HRSB it seems as though we are leaning towards purchasing Chrome Books rather than iPads, most likely due to the cost of iPads, so this works out fine for us. 

I really enjoyed playing around with the Read & Write for Google feature while working on our collaborative project. It was a great way to become more comfortable with the feature, which encouraged me to use it in my classroom. I also just found out that we acquired 20 Chrome books in our school, so I'm excited to get my kids set up on them and get to work!

There's a really cool video below that goes into the features of Read & Write for Google in a little more detail, so feel free to check it out!

Assistive Tech - Day 2 takeaways

We started Day 2 by chatting a bit more about Showbie. I can't believe results that high school teacher Erin Dunn-Keefe had in her classroom using Showbie. Missing assignment rate dropped from 5.21% to .63% ??? That is a huge improvement. You can't argue with numbers like that. It's time for our board to step up and realize that this is the way of the present & the future. Technology's presence will only continue to grow in our schools, and all children need equitable access to it in the classroom. I love hearing stories like Barb told us about Bridgewater High School and how they have a 1-to-1 iPad ratio. Being in a school that has ONE iPad for the school to share, I can't help but wonder what kind of lessons and experiments the kids in my class could be doing if they all had iPads. Hopefully in the near future, we'll get to find out!

Some additional quick notes on the day:
1) While finishing up our first presentation, Tim, Jude & myself used Videoscribe to create a cover page for our comic book. What a cool, but frustrating app to use. I loved the little introductory video that we were able to make; I think it added a neat dynamic to our presentation. However, the fact that our 10 second video took over 12 minutes to upload was a deterrent. If I were to try using this app with our one iPad in our classroom, it would take an unreal amount of time for our entire class to upload videos.
2)  I loved hearing Barb say that AT is about enhancing performance of individuals with disabilities and providing independent access to a task. It's not cheating! It's important for us to remember what it is we're teaching. We're not required to teach students to add or subtract solely on paper; any way that they can express their method of learning is valid. If they require technology to express their thoughts and opinions, let them use it! It's not cheating, it's enhancing student performance.
3) Lastly, I enjoyed our SAMR (not SMAR...lesson learned!) activity, but I could use some more practice enhancing my lessons to redefinition. I feel as though if I were teaching in a school like Bridgewater High, that it would be much more reasonable to reach the "redefinition" stage of SAMR more frequently than I will be able to at my current school with it's minimal technology. That being said, it's something to strive towards!
4) The reading process is an enormous process! There are so many more steps than I originally thought of. Attending to task is a critical part of the process. Being emotionally and physically prepared to sit down and read will greatly influence whether or not you will get anything out of sitting down and reading for a period of time. It's amazing how the early influences in a child's life can set them up to succeed or struggle with reading. Having a 14 month old at home, I've been very aware of the importance of early reading in a child's life. We read each day together and this class reinforced how important that time is!

Cheers,
Chris