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What is in it:

• Curriculum Access Through Technology
• The Student Access Map
• Best Practice
• Educational Technology Accessible to ALL
• Curriculum Access Through Technology

By Rob LeFebvre, education specialist, SESA

Everyone would like to stay current and synchronized with today’s technology for our homes, offices, or schools. Each new product beckons us to run out and buy the latest and greatest software, hardware, or system, hoping it will benefit our students with disabilities. The web is full of hundreds of pages, all begging for the purchase of a hot, new item. New technologies are introduced every day that will allow many more students access to meaningful and successful participation in their schools and communities.

Why do we do this? Why do we consider using technology with students with disabilities? First and foremost, technology should be chosen that assists individual students to access their curriculum. By law, all students have a right to access the general education curriculum, or at least a modified version of that curriculum. On a more practical note, why should special educators  reinvent the wheel by creating curriculum that is already available in the general education classroom? Continue Reading

Ensuring access to the general curriculum

By Maureen Dacey, Kristen Eichleay, and Jack McCauley

“My student needs a laptop.” “I need this software program.” How many times have you heard these or similar requests from a teacher, parent, or therapist? Unfortunately, when you ask questions such as, “What is the specific skill that has been identified as a challenge for this student?” or “What else has been tried?”, people have difficulty answering. Teaching others how to approach assistive technology from a needs-based perspective and recognizing the range of tools and strategies that are part of this process are two of the main reasons we created the Student Access Map.

The Student Access Map, or SAM, resulted from work on two grants that the Boston Public Schools Access Technology Center at Emmanuel College (ATC) received from the Massachusetts Department of Education. It is a framework for determining appropriate assistive technology supports to aid students in addressing the curriculum standards. Its concise format, with extensive supporting handouts, guides IEP teams through the process, providing an efficient and effective tool for documenting the team’s efforts to devise a plan for implementing assistive technology strategies and tools. Continue Reading

By Kirsten Haugen

Participation Plan

What -

A Participation Plan is a one page sheet that describe how a student with special needs participates in a given activity. For example, a plan may explain how a nonverbal student participates in circle time using a voice output device programmed by a peer, where to position the device, and what natural cues or prompts the student needs to communicate using the device. It may even include alternative strategies if the device is unavailable.

A student may have one or several Participation Plans, depending up on the number of daily activities that need modification for the student to participate. Each plan:

• Describes the typical activity
• Summarizes related IEP goals
• Explains special preparation, strategies and materials (including where they’re located)
• Shows how the student participates at each step
• Indicates alternative activiti(es), if appropriate

We’ve used Participation Plans in full inclusion settings, resource rooms, special day classes, lunchrooms, playgrounds, or any setting where a student needs an alternative plan to participate. Using Participation Plans helped us make sure each child could participate in a given activity to the fullest extent possible, using the tools and strategies related to their IEPs. Students also received consistent and appropriate support, regardless of who was working them, because we had a way to share vital information in an efficient, respectful, and confidential manner. The Participation Plans “worked” even when they didn’t work because following the plan on a regular basis helped us stay conscious of our goals and strategies, and we could modify the plans as needed. Continue Reading

Educational technology plays an important role improving learning for all students. However, students with disabilities frequently face basic physical and product access barriers that prevent them from using educational technology to benefit their learning. How does a student who is blind access the Internet? How does a student who is deaf receive information from the audio of a multimedia program?

Access solutions exist. Screen readers that voices the text on the screen of each web page can overcome barriers to  accessing the Internet encountered by students who are blind. Captions built into multimedia programs can overcome barriers for students who are deaf. Some access solutions, using principles of universal design, are built right into the hardware or software, such as captions. Other solutions require add ons, such as screen reader systems. Continue Reading

Deaf and Hard of Hearing

By Krista Galyen, education specialist, SESA

He is a well-behaved student. She sits quietly and doesn’t make trouble. He looks like he understands the material. Time passes and it seems they are successful in their learning environments until they are asked a question or turn in an assignment. Lo and behold, they have missed out on a ton of information, or their knowledge base is “hit and miss.”

Such is the situation of many deaf and hard of hearing (D/HH) students. It is the rare student, as many of you know, who will self-advocate. More often than not, classrooms and D/HH students are being equipped with appropriate technology to present and access the curriculum. However, teachers as well as students are not aware of how to use and teach with the technology they currently have in order to better enable student success in the general classroom. There are also new technologies being made available that are discussed below. Continue Reading