Assistive/Adaptive Technologies

Assistive technologies are those that are used to increase, improve, or maintain the functional capabilities of a child with a disability. While there are no students with severe disabilities at Happy Kids, the term "disability" is broad and encompasses a wide array of conditions. One of these is cognitive disability which covers the spectrum of attention problems and social-emotional problems to full-blown autism. Occasionally students come to us with learning, social, or physical disabilities that require differentiation in the classroom or other adaptations by the teacher and staff. This page gives you information about how and which educational technologies can help assist our students with disabilities in your language arts classroom. Keep reading to learn more. Students with Cognitive Difficulties

Students with mild cognitive disabilities are common throughout all education systems. They are the most prevalent type of disability. A cognitive disability impairs a student's cognitive abilities like learning disabilities, developmental disabilities, and mental retardation. Such conditions that fall under this category include ADHD, dyslexia, and Downs Syndrome. Students with cognitive disabilities need much support with tasks that require reading and writing. Therefore, technology tools that can help these students include programs and hardware that help develop or literacy. This most likely includes a focus on remedial skills to improve access to the curriculum.

Supporting Reading Skills

Teachers at Happy Kids with students who have cognitive disabilities will likely spend much of their time and energy helping their students learn to read. Reading is an essential skill in language arts and a prime focus of our curricula. A wide variety of software tools exist to help you provide reading support for students with cognitive disabilities. These tools vary from ones that help students develop early reading skills like phonics to ones like text-to-speech software that help students with reading fluency and associating written words with spoken words they know. Examples of free online tools that can serve these roles in the classroom include the website Starfall and Reading Bear for reading support and free Google Chrome browser extensions Speak It and Announcify for text-to-speech solutions.

Supporting Writing Skills

Writing is typically the most difficult language skill for students to acquire. Students that struggle with cognitive disabilities often need support during certain phases of the writing process. These students often have difficulty with writing legibly or find the physical act of writing too difficult and tedious. A teacher could use a free speech-to-text tool such as the Chrome extension Dictanote Speech Recognizer or the site Dictation.io to help these students with this phase of their writing. In your classroom, you may find your students with cognitive disabilities often struggle with spelling or grammar. Programs that offer word prediction when writing and that can read aloud and highlight text are often used to support students with mild to moderate cognitive disabilities during the writing process. Learn more about free programs such as Let Me Type and eType and how they can help.

Students with Sensory Difficulties

Students with sensory disabilities involve impairments associated with the loss of hearing or vision. These are also a very prevalent type of disability. People who experience a complete loss of sight or hearing are considered blind or deaf respectively. An individual is considered partially sighted or hearing impaired if there is some ability to see or hear. These impairments are far more common than blindness and deafness. Because this disability limits a student's ability to access technologies in the same way as most students, special tools, software, or methods must be used to help give these students access.

Strategies for the Blind and Partially Sighted

There are a great many free options for making technologies, especially computers, more accessible to blind or partially sighted students. In the language arts classroom reading and writing are essential, so alternative reading solutions and writing input methods are needed to help students who are visually impaired. In fact, computers offer a gateway for these students by helping them access content displayed on a computer screen. Many options for optimizing a computer for these students come already installed on the Windows 7 machines we have at school. These options include adjusting the contrast of the screen and screen magnifiers for the partially sighted as well a screen reader application and voice input and command capabilities for the blind. If these resources are insufficient, try Thunder, a free screen reading application that works on all computers for all applications. This option will work across platforms as well. All of these tools will aid students with reading and writing assignments in the language arts classroom.

Strategies for the Deaf and Hearing Impaired

There are a great many free tech options for making the language arts classroom more accessible to deaf or hearing impaired students as well. These students need help accessing audio content displayed on a computer, but less support with reading and writing. Many options for optimizing a computer for these students come already installed on the Windows 7 machines we have at school. These options include visual alerts to replace the warning bells and beeps and automatic captioning (when available). Probably the most important content that students with hearing difficulties will need in the classroom will be for educational video content shown during class. Using videos that have captions and providing a printed transcript of the video for these students is essential and not overly difficult. Media players like Video LAN's VLC Media Player make it easy to create and add captions manually to a video. YouTube also allows you to upload video and add your own captions to it. If you lack the time to make your own captioning, YouTube also has an automatic captioning service (for English) that works fairly well and can suffice in a pinch.

At-Risk Students

At-risk students are those who experience little success in school and are at risk of dropping out or failing. While they are not technically considered disabled by legal definition, at-risk students difficulties are often similar to those with cognitive disabilities and can require similar assistive services and technologies. At-risk students have difficulties with remembering tasks, reading comprehension, written expression, and motivation in the classroom. Happy Kids frequently has students in its classes who are struggling and need additional support. Technology can offer support for these students in a variety of ways such as providing reminder services, text-to-speech programs, dictation software, and more.

Reading and writing support

At-risk students need support in a variety areas to increase their chances of success in school. Reading and writing are important parts of the language arts curriculum. One way to help students struggling in these areas is to utilize speech-to-text and dictation tools to help with writing. Free speech-to-text tool such as the Chrome extensions Dictanote Speech Recognizer, Speak It, Announcify, and the site Dictation.io are a some free options to try.

Increase motivation and interest

At-risk students also benefit from strategies that help boost their motivation in the classroom. Try strategies and resources that are more interesting than traditional instructional materials or shift power and control of learning more to the student to encourage taking responsibility. This can be easily done in the language arts classroom by planning interesting and creative lessons. Free online resources are available to give you some ideas and tools to implement motivating lessons for at-risk students such as the Joined Nations, Crash Course on YouTube, TrackStar, or Crayon, a free newspaper creation tool.

Gifted and Talented Students

"Gifted" students are not uncommon at a well-established reputable school like Happy Kids. Gifted students are defined as students who who demonstrate high achievement capability in scholastic areas and need services and programs not normally provided by the school in order to further develop their ability. Gifted students do not need support with the curriculum, but instead need differentiated lessons to further develop their abilities. Technologies can help with this by accelerating the pace of the class, adding richer content to the learning process, open doors for these students to pursue their passions, provide tools to produce higher-quality products, and develop social relationships with other gifted students of like interests.

Tools to showcase final products

Gifted students should be given multiple ways to showcase their knowledge and ability. In the language arts classroom, this is most often accomplished by providing a larger audience for polished pieces of writing. Many free online resources are readily available to help students do this much easier and more efficiently than ever before. Developing a podcast with Audacity, multimedia presentations with Prezi or Google Slides, or a showcase website or blog using Google Sites, Weebly, or Blogger are all great ways for students to share their work for their parents and the whole school community to see as this showcased work can easily be shared via social media or on the school website.

Advanced coursework

Gifted students are typically ahead of their peers in class and can easily get bored and disinterested in course content. To prevent these students from "checking-out", a teacher should provide opportunities for gifted students to extend their learning beyond what is being covered in class by pursuing their passions and interests beyond the curriculum. Technology resources online can make this as easy as securing an Internet connection for the student. Take advantage of the many open source advanced course resources out there to provide advanced learning opportunities for gifted students in your classes. Some relevant examples include Crash Course Literature, open English courses at Yale, and the Khan Academy (particularly the history and test prep courses).

Students with Physical Difficulties

Students with physical disabilities have impaired mobility and agility. These disabilities cause difficulties with motor movements and often occur concurrently with other disabilities. Such conditions that fall under this category include injuries that impair movement, loss of a limb, or motor control diseases like palsy. Students with physical disabilities often require physical modifications of technology tools to be able to access them, such as a joystick or modified keyboard. Without special modifications, accessing technologies like computers and tablets can be very difficulty for students with physical disabilities.

Windows 7

There are a great many free options for using technologies, especially computers, to make the language arts curriculum more accessible to students with physical disabilities. For example, these students may lack the motor skills to use pen and paper or may need help physically using a computer for an assignment, especially inputting information through the mouse of keyboard (depending on the disability.) Many options for optimizing a computer for these students come already installed on the Windows 7 machines we have at school. These options include modifying the keyboard, alternate input devices and methods (including voice control), modifying the mouse's input, adjusting the keyboard's behavior and keystrokes, and more. With the aid of these resources, a physically disabled student can be empowered to write on her own and access the same course content as the rest of the class.

Wheelchair-mounted computers

While Happy Kids currently does not serve any physically disabled students, it is prudent to be prepared for a student with physical difficulties. While the strategies above will help these students use and access a computer better to provide better access to course content, students confined to a wheelchair would have great difficulty even sitting at one of our school's machines or even our tables and desks. For students confined to a wheelchair, wheelchair-mounted computers would most likely be the best technology solution to this accessibility problem. Wheelchair-mounted computers are getting better and smaller and offer a wide range of capabilities to assist users in all forms of tasks including reading, writing, and other forms of communication. A great example how this technology can enable the communication abilities of the severely disabled is Stephan Hawking. Read all about what he has written about his own wheelchair computer here.

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