Skip to main content

Educational Assistive Technology

Here is a news article that is about something that I has always been saying (along with a number of others), the use of assistive technology not only helps those persons with disabilities, it can help just about anyone. The difference is usually the difference in making something possible and easier. But in other ways, the assistive technologies may be improving learning my adapting the instructional materials for a learning style or situation. eBooks can be so much more accommodating that printed text, with their ability to adjust font size and use text-to-speech as two examples. For those of us who need glasses to read, the font size adjustment is certainly a big help. But also research has reported that increasing the font size a couple of times also decreases reading errors for students (along with making the text appear easier to read [less intimidating] it actually is easier). So too with text-to-speech, students can listen while they read, thereby reading in multi-modalities, or they could just listen (auditory learner). If you haven't tried some of the assistive ebook technologies, I suggest that you give them a try and give yourself some practice time to see what they can do and which will work for you. Check your settings to see what you can do. And remember it takes practice to usually get used to a different format.


How some assistive technology may benefit all students
Advances in assistive technology that help customize learning for students with disabilities may also improve education for other students as well, some experts say. For example, text readers used for some students with disabilities may also benefit students who are better auditory learners, one expert suggests. To maximize benefits, experts say more professional development for teachers is needed and that input from multiple educators is needed when buying and implementing new technology. Education Week (premium article access compliments of EdWeek.org) (3/17)
Labels:

Comments

  1. Mrs. ShierApril 12, 2011 at 8:55 AM

    I also support the concept of combining text and audio. A few years ago I made podcasts of my written lecture notes for my OL courses. Unfortunately, when we migrated to our current LMS could not upload the podcasts. Furthermore, the internal links failed. I also think that when we use audio technologies, it's important for the person generating the content to be able to easily accommodate disabled users. Right now, as far as I know, if I wanted to respond to student writing in both text and audio, I would have to launch two separate, non-coordinated software programs. Too much trouble to do for all the students we teach at my college!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ebooks as Textbooks - Part 2 - Highlighting

Highlighting can be a very effective tool in reading and learning no matter the kind of text being read: from novels to textbooks. Most textbooks or other forms of information text will usually used text features along with graphics to help organize information presented in the text.  These elements are done to help focus attention on important or key concepts and provide additional information. The text organization itself can include structural elements such as heading, subheading, index, glossary, paragraph spacing, bulleted or numbered lists, sidebars or side boxes, italics, underlines or bold for words or even sections. Graphic content can include the use of symbols, colors, illustrations, pictures, diagrams, charts, and graphs. Poor highlighting design - too much text has been highlighted.  The act of highlighting is less time consuming and much easier than note-taking ( to be discussed in an upcoming posting). To be effective in highlighting it should be a kind of  meta
1 comment
Read more

Ebooks as Textbooks Part 8: Textbook structure

Textbooks usually have a structure, and it doesn't matter if it is an electronic textbook or a paper printed one, the people who put the textbook together usually make it have a structure to help you better understand what you are reading and learning. Textbooks are usually a type of text known as informational or expository text - this is text written to inform, and can be things like textbook chapters, newspaper and magazine articles, and other reference materials like encyclopedia items. The other kind of text that you usually encounter in school is narrative text, where a story is being told - which could be fictional or non-fiction. And while textbooks are informational text, many will also have narrative text, usually as stories to help you better understand the concept, although in an English or literature class the stories are often more the focus of the learning. Textbook Elements With an electronic textbook it might be hard to see the structure, because you cant riffle
Post a Comment
Read more

Auto Summarization

In dealing with textbooks and students with disabilities, one of the most common things that we would do is to get the textbook in a digital format, as an ebook. By doing this we were able to use a number of tools based on the need of the student. I've had students who could not lift their physical printed textbook, but would be able to access though a laptop installed in their electronic wheelchair, for students with vision issues we could boost the font size or use a text-to-speech tool to have the book read aloud to them. One tool that I used with a number of my students who had issues was the Auto Summarize tool in Word. The tool works well with textbook, but wouldn't work for other texts, such as novels.  I used this to reduce the amount of text that they had to read, the "cognitive load" of the text, but would still enable be able to get the information. Word did a great job, and depending on the student I would reduce the text to about 66% for facts and support
7 comments
Read more