Assistive Technology: Helping Students Be Nothing Special

Last year, I taught English Language Learners on Guam. The accommodations and modifications suggested by the Department of Education for my classes were numerous but surprisingly mundane--a long list of special techniques and strategies to aid second language learning that were, in truth, not all that special. 

For example, I, as an ELL instructor, was urged to make frequent use of visual aids and graphic organizers. I was to differentiate instruction and use cooperative learning groups.  I was to allow them more time to complete tasks.

I found myself planning lessons that could be used in any classroom, using data-based strategies that would be effective with any student. For example, using think-pair-share techniques with generous wait time for responses combined the benefits of cooperative learning with the time allowance necessary for eliciting well-thought out responses. Using a PowerPoint presentation allowed students to both see and hear the key points of the lesson. These are all recommended practices for any student.

Turning to the needs of another group of diverse learners, students with disabilities, I find myself rediscovering the same idea: to design a lesson for students with disabilities, I might as well design a universal one. Smith and Tyler (2010), in their Introduction to Special Education, write that “universal design for learning techniques and differentiated instruction help all students profit" (p. 38). Assistive technology (AT) helps a student with a disability benefit even more from these well-researched techniques, but, more than that, allows that student nearly full and unaccommodated participation.

A typical English lesson might begin with an advance organizer such as a KWL, wherein students engage prior knowledge and make predictions by writing what they already Know, what they Want to know, and then filling in what they've Learned after reading. It might then be followed by reading a passage and labeling the elements of that story. An essay might then be assigned as homework on the major theme of the story. 

For a class with students with disabilities, the KWL might be completed on a computer with voice recognition software to aid those who have motor impairments. Audiobooks would benefit those with visual impairments in the reading portion of the lesson. The elements of a story could be sorted on a computer program aiding those with learning disabilities by helping them see text more clearly and those with attention deficit disorder by helping them stay focused. Word processing software would also aid the learning disabled person in writing, organizing and editing their essay, as well as the physically impaired learner--and any other student.

To sum up, AT could be used for all portions of this lesson--and to the advantage of all learners. For the middle elements of the lesson, perhaps, one would not normally think of using technology, but both audiobooks and computer games and manipulative programs have the merit of engaging all students, as they both help students learn through multiple intelligences—the former engaging both verbal and auditory intelligences, the second visual and kinesthetic.

In the video, Assistive Technology: Enabling Dreams, a young woman with cerebral palsy, Susanna Sweeney-Martini, speaks of all the ways AT helps her live a full life (Ellis, 2005). A computer helps her do her homework; a wheelchair allows mobility.  “Assistive Technology  is the major foundation of my life,” she says. “Without it, I could not exist as I am today.”

It is a foundation that allows her access to a world of learning that does not need to be altered to fit a disability; it allows her to be more than that disability. A least restrictive environment is mandated for students with disabilities by federal law and moral right. AT in the classroom allows those who are mainstreamed to participate in that environment to the fullest extent, to learn with special strategies and technologies which are really not that special because they are for everyone.

References

Ellis, Ken. (2005). Assistive Technology: Enabling Dreams [Video File]. Retrieved July 18, 2011 from http://www.edutopia.org/assistive-technology-enabling-dreams-video.

Smith, D. D., & Tyler, N. C. (2010). Introduction to Special Education: Making a Difference (7th ed., p. 38). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Merrill.