Topic #11 Assistive Technology

This is my 2nd attempt to publish this post as my first one had an error and was deleted...ugh!

I had never heard of Assitive Technology until last week, so this whole idea is new to me and I don't know about many resources. I spent time on the internet looking at various recourses, and found a few that were pretty good.

My favorite site that I went to this week was the one we looked at for our homework (http://www.atto.buffalo.edu/). This is the site that offered the AT basics as well as the tutorials. I thought the tutorials were extremely helpful and offered some great ideas for implemenation in the classroom. I plan to use the Talking Books idea on power point. I think this site offers great explanations of the basics of AT and how to use them in your classroom.

I have also enjoyed reading the materials from Closing the Gap (http://www.closingthegap.com/). I think this provides great insight to AT for teachers as well as parents. I think the articles are very informative.

One site that I found is awesome. It's called Education World (www.educationworld.com/assistive/sp_ed/assistive/index.shtml ). This site has an ENORMOUS amount of resources for both parents as well as educaters and students. There are 3 sections. The first is "General Recourses" which includes articles/resources for technology in the classroom as well as basic information for parents. If you go to this site, make sure you check our the "Technology Center". This is a great section for teachers and tells you about many different resources you can use with your students. There is a great article by Larry Ferlazzo that offers 2.0 activities for students. I highly recommend checking it out. They also do an "On the Big Screen" spotlight and this month it features a software called Geographic Information Systems (GIS) which allows students to map different areas. It sounds a little like Google Earth. The two other sections inclue "Narrowing the Gap in Academics" and "Creating Independence". They showcase different sites such as PlaneMath to help children. They also discuss a program called Speak to Write which is a federally funded project and uses voice recognition to allow students with disabilities to write.

Washington University also has a great site called Access IT (www.washington.edu/accessit/articles?109 ). This site offers information on AT as well as a great knowledge base idex. This index has 162 articles about AT. These articles are anywhere from how to implement different things to identifying various AT needs.

I head Don Johnston's name when I was listening to the Dr. Nelson podcast. He also has a wonderful site (http://www.donjohnston.com/). There is an excellent tab called "Recourses" and there are many wonderful recourses that teachers can use with their students. All of the recourses are literacy recourses and they are amazing. You should check them out. His site also includes videos to see how some of his products are implemented.

Apple also has a site for their Mac (www.apple.com/education/special-education/?cp=WWA-EDUSEM-Q409 ). I had no idea that they had created an OS that focuses on AT. Their products help with Literacy & Learning, Vision, Hearing, and Physical & Motor Skills. I'm glad to see that Apple is focusing on the needs of people with different disabilities.

I am enjoying learning about Assistive Technology and look forward to finding more great recourses.