Thanks for a Great Experience

Wow! I have to say that today was truely inspiring! Thank you for sharing your experiences with me. I have to say that over the years I have taken courses that when the final class came nothing within me or my teaching practices changed. Fortunately, that is not the case this time. I am excited about my new found knowledge and appreciation for the role that Assistive Technology can play for my students. And that there is a process for matching and implementing AT! I am no longer in search of that program that is perfect and will suit the needs of all of my student, I now understand that is not a reality. That the diverse needs of students plays a role in all aspects of their programming including the AT. It has been a pleasure to work with you Barb and benefit from your knowledge. I have enjoyed everyones AT stories involving the good and the bad. These experiences lead me to the conclusion that we need to get out there and advocate for AT and share our knowledge with our colleagues. We need to work toward making AT a priority in our schools and others. That no matter how small our success' are we need to stop and celebrate as small success' add up. Hope you all enjoyed the course as much as I did. Keep moving forward!

Karen

Everyone Wants the Answer

Since I started talking this course people have started asking my advice about AT...my husband included. Within these questions I have noticed a trend..everybody wants the solution and everybody wants the solution for all students within one program. There is a search for that perfect program that will work for everyone and as I have discovered within this course that does not exist. I have to admit before taking this course I too did not realize the importance of matching the AT to the personality and the milieu. My husband has called me at work several times with a scenario regarding a student and asked the question what program would be best. I now find myself explaining that depends on the student/personality, milieu and the technology. Last week as I was working on my casestudy, I excitedly displayed the before and after work of the student I was working with in the office. She had used cowriter. The comment was made well so and so used that here before and they didn't like it. My response " not every program works for every student but it definitely works for her"

Clicker 5

I have to say I walked away from our last class very excited about Clicker 5. We have 9 students on the Autistism spectrum, 2 students with Cerebral Palsy, 2 students with Down Syndrome, 1 student with Williams Syndrome, 1 student with Anglemans and many others who are cognitively delayed learning within my school. Clicker 5 could support these students in many ways. I think about our Autistic students and echolalia. This is an excellent writing tool for those who struggle with creating ideas as Clicker 5 leads their writing and can provide them with choices. Not to mention the social stories that could be created!! And the writing activities around these social stories. It was with great excitment that I went back to work and asked to order Clicker 5. It was a tough sell... my administrator explained that we have alot of teachers whom go to inservices and come back wanting computer programs...the school orders them and then they never get used. I begged and promised it would get used and then offered to pay for it from my own pocket. I told her I would put my own money on it to guarantee that it was useful and would get used. Clicker 5 has been ordered and the school made the purchase!

Scientifically-Based Research Validating Kurzweil 3000

The article by the Kruzweil Educational Systems, An Annotated Review of Current Rearch Supporting the Use of Kurzweil 3000 in the classsroom is an excellent literature source. The article which was divided into two parts: Why Kurzweil 3000 provides essential support to students who are reading significantly below grade level and Kurzweil 3000 The Ideal Classroom Accomodation are then broken down into skills that are challenging to struggling readers. This is where the literature comes in. Under each of these skills there are titles listed that correspond with the skill and a summary of the text. These titles were easy to locate by googling them. There were several that caught the interest of my husband and myself .... The Reading Crisis: Why Poor Children Fall Behind. I see some excellent resources for future courses anyone might be taking or professional reading around your interests and student needs. As well, I found a quote within this text that I think does a good job summarizing the benefits of using text to speech software like Kurzweil which would be useful in explaining to teachers who are hesitant who these tools are essential for some students..."ways of exposing struggling readers to subject matter content at their grade level while helping them become more accurate and fluent readers."