Caren Sax, Ian Pumpian, and Doug Fisher’s “Assistive Technology and Inclusion” gives a good insight into the growing struggles, and yet possibilities, involved in developing and obtaining assistive technologies in educational settings. The story of Joey was used to help demonstrate all of the possibilities, especially through the story of his use of switches to communicate.
There are many resources for getting a hold of these innovative technologies but most people are unaware of them. I know that before I read this article I was unaware of the ways that I could have gotten involved in helping out these special needs students. A quote that I found compelling was, “Joey’s classmates were an invaluable source of creativity who thought of innovative strategies to increase Joey’s participation” (3). This article was able to demonstrate all of the ways that students can get involved in including the special needs students, like Joey, into their classes and activities. Not everything has to be reliant on the teachers or staff at the school. In fact, I feel like students have the potential to be the most helpful because they are probably more in touch to what is desired and liked by the student. Another quote I found interesting was, “…peers in the room saw this activity as a way to interact with Joey” (2). This just goes to show that special needs students don’t need to be stuck in the same room all day and separated from the other students. There are many ways to get all students involved and peers are happy to do so.
While I was reading this article I found many connections to my experiences in school. In the beginning of the article, it mentioned how peer helpers avoided contact with Joey and I believe this was because they didn’t know how to deal with Joey’s special needs. In my high school, the peer helpers were taught how to deal with the special needs of the students and were chosen based on who could help the student in the best way. The article later talked about how Joey was moved to general education classes and I believe that this is best for Joey’s education and integration into the real world. I believe every special needs student should be introduced into a class with other students because you never know how the students may help this child, just as Joey’s classmates developed ways to help him. While I was reading the part of the article about developing technologies based on the students needs and specifying them to each individual student, I couldn’t help but think about the show Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. Often times the show builds a home for a family with special needs children or family members. What really inspires me is how the show meets with professionals and people that know how to develop assistive technologies to help the special needs family member in ways customized for them. They try to find the most innovative technology and just want the individual to live the best life possible with the least limitations.
There were spots throughout the article that left me wondering more. The article didn’t really explain Joey’s transition into general education classes and middle school. I would like to know what resources are out there to help with these transitions because I’m sure it was more complicated than the article made it seem. Who decides what students to integrate into general education classes and how do they go about this? I feel like community is a big part of this integration and development of technologies. Students can work together with engineers to develop a project to help the special needs students. Parents can work with teachers and children in the classrooms to help get everyone involved in normalizing the special needs student’s life. Everybody must work together to help make assistive technologies useful and use them to their fullest potential.
While the “Assistive Technology and Inclusion” article was more inspirational, Kathleen Puckett’s “An Assistive Technology Toolkit: Type II Applications for Students with Mild Disabilities” article was more informational about assistive technologies. The article explained how the technologies present more opportunities for students with mild disabilities and what can be done to obtain the technology, through the development of an assistive technology toolkit. When I was reading the first article and before I read this one, I was thinking in my head of students with severe disabilities. It never occurred to me that resources are often directly obtained for individual students and not for special needs students as a whole. There are many students with mild disabilities that could greatly benefit from technologies that I didn’t even know about. The whole focus of assistive technology shouldn’t just be on students with severe disabilities, but also needs to focus on students with mild disabilities.
A quote that I found important was, “Designing lessons with digital tools enhances the flexibility of the curriculum and increases the probability that all students will be able to participate in the learning experience, an element of planning referred to as universal design for learning” (108). This statements shows that the ultimate goal of “helping special education students achieve general education outcomes” requires the participation of all students. Learning experiences shouldn’t just be developed for general education students but needs to also include special education students. The only way to get special education students to achieve general education success is the integration of these students into regular classrooms. In order to do this, technology has to be developed and purchased that leads to the adaptation of curriculum to all students. This technology can be obtained in the form of a toolkit. “Toolkits allow teachers to anticipate the support needed in inclusive settings to enhance learner productivity, and are chosen for features that meet a range of needs and abilities” (111). The toolkit would allow for technologies to help students with many different needs, and aren’t just for an individual with very specific needs. Children with mild disabilities would be able to benefit from assistive technologies with these toolkits, and be able to reap all of the educational benefits that weren’t previously available to them.
The connections I was able to make with this article were how these toolkits and assistive technologies would have been really useful in m schooling. My high school made an effort to get special needs students involved in general education classes, and this included students with mild disabilities. I was involved in a program called Best Buddies where students were paired up with intellectually challenged students and hung out and did activities outside of school. It was like a Big Brother/ Big Sister program. Doing this program presented me with the opportunity to meet students with severe and mild disabilities and see what was being done during school to help these students out. The toolkits talked about in the article would be useful in my school because we already do make an effort to involve special needs students into a “universal design for learning.”
While reading the article I had many questions about how to get these toolkits and programs implemented into the schools. Getting the toolkits to the schools requires legislation and it would be good to know how people in the community can get the legislation moving. A way to help with this could be informing the community about the possibility of these toolkits and their benefits. I’m sure if the people of the community knew about this they would do what they could to help get the legislation moving. Another question is how we can get teachers up to date on basic technology skills and the different types of assistive technologies available. It is extremely important that teachers are aware of all the advances in technology and what is available for them to use with their students. A way to help with this is technology training for these teachers to teach them the basic skills they need. Assistive technology is crucial in the educational settings of today and every teacher needs to be up to date on all of the possibilities that can help them involve every student at the school. No one student is more important than the other.
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