IT and Special Education

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IT and Special Education

• Computers in Education

Week 12
Ruth Geer
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What do we mean by special needs?

• Learning difficulties
• Learning disabilities
• Specific learning disabilities
• Learning differences
• Dyslexia
• Gifted talented

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How many students struggle

• Mapping the Territory (2000) report suggests
  that between 6-30 of students will experience
  learning difficulties
• More than 30 of Australian children entering
  high school cannot read or write properly (ACER)
• Almost 50 of Australians (16-65) do not have the
  necessary literacy and numeracy levels to deal
  with present day work requirements

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Policy of inclusion

• Policy of inclusion now brings children with
  special needs into mainstream classrooms
• Every student , regardless of type of disability
  should be given equal educational opportunities
• Teachers often feel unprepared to deal with
  students with special needs

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Rationale behind mainstreaming

• Give disabled students an educational experience
  like everyone else
• Attitudes towards the disabled might improve
  student attitudes as they worked side by side
  with others
• Improves self esteem of disabled student

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Value of technology

• Improved motivation and self esteem
• Increased opportunities to communicate and
  interact with others
• Technology can often help to compensate for
  disability
• Computer is tireless and works patiently with
  students
• Special peripherals and software can enable
  children to do things themselves
• Levels the playing field

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Assistive technologies

• Range of switches
• Touch tablets
• Customised/adaptive keyboards
• Optical pointers
• Head pointing devices

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Adaptive Programs

• Speech synthesizers
• information is read aloud to students
• Word-prediction
• helps generate sentences and spell words
  correctly
• Voice recognition
• Enter text by speaking it
• Use of virtual reality feel gloves

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Limitations

• Voice recognition needs perfecting
• Greater use of graphical interfaces - difficult
  for synthesizers
• Programs and devices are very costly
• Lack of training for teachers

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Goals of Gifted Program

• Provide further opportunities and experiences
• Establish an environment that values
  intelligence, talent etc
• Opportunities for interaction with others
• Find, explore develop abilities

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Technology Gifted

• Technology supports independent work
• Opportunity to explore, discover and advance own
  interests
• Provides opportunity to communicate with experts
• Greater opportunity to extend beyond requirements

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Remediation vs Compensation

• Teachers are comfortable with remediation and
  instructional technologies
• Compensation cheating
• Because this question of remediation vs
  compensation is not routinely askedstudents
  enter the world of work without the compensatory
  skills to overcome the lifelong handicap of not
  being able to read (Edyburn, 2003)

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Readers

• Free downloads
• www.readplease.com
• www.naturalreaders.com
• www.premier-programming.com
• http//wordweb.info

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Activity

• Use Google to help locate useful gifted resources
  for children in your target age group. The
  resources must be from Australasia or the UK

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Useful Resources

• Special Education Resources on the
  Internethttp//seriweb.com/
• Adaptive Technology for the Internethttp//www.al
  a.org/editions/samplers/mates/
• Click Click hooray for Kidshttp//www.uknow.or.jp
  /uk_now/features/IT/docs/IT_4_e.htm
• Adaptive computer productshttp//www.makoa.org/co
  mputers.htm
• Current and emerging Assistive technologieshttp/
  /cio.doe.gov/assistive/
• Assistive education and therapy technologies
  http//www.assistive.co.uk/

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Resources cont

• Australian Disability Clearinghouse on Education
  and Training http//www.adcet.edu.au/
• Solutions for Students with Disabilitieshttp//ww
  w.donjohnston.com/catalog/disabil.htm
• National Center to improve practice in Special
  Educationhttp//www2.edc.org/NCIP/library/toc.htm
  
• The Alliance for Technology Accesshttp//www.atac
  cess.org/default.html
• Regency Park Rehabilitation Engineering Products
  and Services Cataloguehttp//www.chariot.net.au/
  jasonl/new6.htm
• Ability Hubhttp//www.abilityhub.com/
• Special Education Resource Unit
• http//www.seru.sa.edu.au/

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Research on impacts of ICTS

• Has an edit effect in terms of quality of student
  work and practical examples through
  visualisation
• Improves poor handwriting and English skills
  through word processing
• Equalises individual differences and particularly
  has dramatic effects for students with special
  needs
• Facilitates self pacing with increased capacities
  to deal with individual learning styles as
  students can work at the pace and intensity
  suitable to their needs
• Enables collaborative learning with little
  indication of the isolated learner
• Encourages use of peer coaching and peer reviews
• Develops communication skills and awareness of
  different audiences
• Impacts on resourcebased learning and access to
  real world information through the Web

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Research on impacts of ICTS

• Increases reliability and currency of information
  adding to authenticity of learning tasks, with
  realistic and up-to-date information
• Increases student motivation through hands on
  activity, visual representations and improved
  modes of presentation
• Encourages independent learning and individual
  preferences for process, layout, style and
  format
• Gives students more control
• Allows to students to produce high quality
  multimedia products
• Changes teacher practices, planning tools and
  assessment rubrics and
• Increases opportunities for classes to evolve and
  for student experiences to shape outcomes.

Executive Summary of the Effective use of
Information and Communications Technology to
enhance learning for disadvantaged school
students, DETYA 2003 http//www.detya.gov.au/scho
ols/publications/subject_ict.htm4
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Debunking the Myths

• Working class students dont have computers at
  home
• Indigenous students always prefer working in
  groups
• Girls benefit from working in groups
• Girls are less competent at computers than boys
• Indigenous students do not like computers
• Computer games are bad for boys
• Teachers are being replaced by computers
• Teachers are technophobes
• Computers are anti-social
• Computer mediated communication is culture and
  gender free and
• Students who cannot read, also cannot work
  effectively with ICT in ways that improve
  learning.

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Activity

• You have to prepare a proposal for your school
  board on a systematic approach using ICTs for a
  particular sector of students with special needs
  (including disadvantaged students).
• Choose a particular sector and use the DETYA
  report and any web resources to develop the major
  points for your proposal.