What is Assistive Technology?

Assistive Technology (AT) is any item that helps bypass, work around or compensate for learning difficulties. AT is a process. It will change over time. AT provides access to a task, improves performance of a task and allows students with learning difficulties to work independently. AT is not information technology (IT). Technology will only assit an individual if the tool matches individual need.

Monday, 31 October 2011

Reluctant Writers Webinar

I really love these webinars!  They are so convenient!  :)  When the writing process task analysis was being shared one participant comments that she would like to show the T.A. to all math teachers.  I laughed when I read her comment!  I understand this sentiment because we often take for granted that students can read (and read well).  We devalue this process and judge language arts and humanities courses as easy.  Grrrr.  One app I thought was clever is the Instand Poetry app.  I remember in my first year of teaching a colleague of mine went all over HRM buying those fridge magnet poetry sets to use with her English Communications class as an intro to poetry.  They loved them... but now there is an app!  Of course, I should have known.  I mentioned Strip Designer in another post.  I think it has great potential in the classroom.  I thought Writing Toolkit and Storyteller provided unique ideas for prompting writing.  The speech-to-text and text-to-speech apps, in my opinion, are going to become very popular in the classroom.  If I purchase an iPad I think it would be useful to have the WritePad app as well as DocToGo.  One app I noticed that might be useful for my son is ABC Letter Training (because it is free).

Question - Can you plug an iPod into an LCD projector?  How do students typically share what they create on the iPods?