About Me

My photo
2011-2012 Online A and B school blog.

Tuesday, January 3, 2012

Assistive Technology

While searching the internet for stories about assistive technology, I came across the inspirational stories of three young Hawaiian children with learning disabilities and the technology that helped them catch up in school. The first story was about a young boy named Elijah, by the time he reached third grade, we couldn’t read. It was the result of an inability to make the connection between letters, their sounds and the way they appear in text, this also lead to a lack in writing skills. Eli was offered the chance to catch up to his classmates with the use of some assistive technology in the form of interactive phonics programs on a computer. With this program he was shown three to four letters in a lesson, one at a time, as each letter appeared on the screen, he could click on it to hear the sound it made and an example in which the letter is used. In the course of one school year, Eli’s reading and writing abilities grew the equivalent of more than two full years in school.
The next story from the Hawaiian children was a little boy named Taba, a very intelligent boy who was interested in everything under the sun, especially science and nature. The only reason Taba was behind in school was that he couldn’t transfer his thoughts into text; the disability frustrated Taba because he knew as much as the other kids in his class but still couldn’t participate in the same activities. The school was granted a speech to text computer that would allow Taba to talk to the computer into a special microphone that translated the words into Standard English Text that would show up on the screen. Using his special computer program, he was able to participate in everyday school activities such as journal entries, spelling tests and creative writing.
The last story on the site was about Camille and eight year old girl in second grade with Down’s Syndrome. Camille was allowed to use a computer to help her complete school work, but with a lack of hand/eye coordination, she found it difficult to type precisely and efficiently. So the school created a different set-up, they paired her with a two button track ball and an intellikey® Keyboard. Intellikey Keyboards are large and brightly colored and work somewhat like a touch screen where the user can touch a picture or icon that performs a specific assigned duty. By the year’s end, Camille could efficiently work on the computer and duplicate functions that had been previously automated, she even learned to program the keyboard to do specific and personalized tasks.

No comments:

Post a Comment