3.4 Adaptive & Assistive Technology
Candidates facilitate the use of adaptive and assistive technologies to support individual student learning needs. (PSC 3.4/ISTE 3d)
Artifact: Assistive Technology Field Experience
Reflection:
The Assistive Technology plan was implemented as an unstructured field experience. I tutored a 2nd grade student with a visual impairment. His mother had noted that he expressed disinterest in reading, which had caused him to fall behind grade level in school, and thought that use of an iPad may increase his interest in reading.
The Assistive Technology plan demonstrates my ability to use assistive technologies, such as the iPad, to support his individual learning needs. I conducted a needs assessment with the student before designing an implementation plan that would teach him how to use the functions of an iPad to overcome his visual impairment. During tutoring session he learned how to use accessibility features to enlarge the font on the iPad, as well as how to use the text-to-speech functions. He also learned how to download and access several interactive storybooks that are designed for students in his grade level.
While I certainly learned a great deal about assistive technologies and various accessibility features available on the iPad during this field experience, I also gained experience working with younger students. As a high school teacher, I typically work with students 14 and older so to interact and teach a 2nd grade student was certainly out of my comfort zone. However, I know that technology coaches may work with teachers of all grade levels so they must be familiar with the cognitive capacity and interests of students in each of those grade levels. In reflecting on the experience, I think I may have changed the length of the sessions. We typically met for 30 minutes to an hour, but I think that 10-20 minutes would have been a better time length of time, since his attention span was relatively short. Accessibility to the student, however, made this difficult as we tried to coordinate schedules during the summer months.
I do believe that the assistive technology will increase the student’s learning outcomes. Though his mother does not currently plan to allow him to use the iPad at school, it will assist him in completing homework and nightly assigned reading, two tasks that he typically struggled with because of eyestrain at the end of the day. He certainly picked up on the functions of the iPad very quickly and demonstrated an increased interest in reading because of the interactivity of the online texts.
The Assistive Technology plan was implemented as an unstructured field experience. I tutored a 2nd grade student with a visual impairment. His mother had noted that he expressed disinterest in reading, which had caused him to fall behind grade level in school, and thought that use of an iPad may increase his interest in reading.
The Assistive Technology plan demonstrates my ability to use assistive technologies, such as the iPad, to support his individual learning needs. I conducted a needs assessment with the student before designing an implementation plan that would teach him how to use the functions of an iPad to overcome his visual impairment. During tutoring session he learned how to use accessibility features to enlarge the font on the iPad, as well as how to use the text-to-speech functions. He also learned how to download and access several interactive storybooks that are designed for students in his grade level.
While I certainly learned a great deal about assistive technologies and various accessibility features available on the iPad during this field experience, I also gained experience working with younger students. As a high school teacher, I typically work with students 14 and older so to interact and teach a 2nd grade student was certainly out of my comfort zone. However, I know that technology coaches may work with teachers of all grade levels so they must be familiar with the cognitive capacity and interests of students in each of those grade levels. In reflecting on the experience, I think I may have changed the length of the sessions. We typically met for 30 minutes to an hour, but I think that 10-20 minutes would have been a better time length of time, since his attention span was relatively short. Accessibility to the student, however, made this difficult as we tried to coordinate schedules during the summer months.
I do believe that the assistive technology will increase the student’s learning outcomes. Though his mother does not currently plan to allow him to use the iPad at school, it will assist him in completing homework and nightly assigned reading, two tasks that he typically struggled with because of eyestrain at the end of the day. He certainly picked up on the functions of the iPad very quickly and demonstrated an increased interest in reading because of the interactivity of the online texts.