Facilitating learning as well as improvement in the students’ performance through creation, utilization and management of the appropriate technological processes and also resources is essential in the development of the students in school and their future. Assistive technology in teaching is necessary as it enables the students with a disability to have equal opportunities with students who are no mental or physical challenge and also assist in enhancing understanding of the subjects taught in class. On the other side, the instructor gets an easy time in teaching when using technological resources in teaching. Some of the assistive technology resources applicable in a classroom for teaching are Social networks, E-learning authoring tools, Text-to-speech assistive tools, Proofreading software, Math Talk software, FM Systems, Draft builder, Intel reader, Sound-field systems and graphical organizers. By adopting these technological resources among others ensures effective learning process and future preparation of the students.
Social networks as one of the assistive technology support applicable in teaching students in a classroom involve the use of web pages like wikis, Facebook, Tweeter, Instagram and Blogs among other social media platforms. The students can be given access to these social media platforms where they can give suggestions, carry out their assignments and tasks as well as give their opinions on what they feel about the learning process. The social network platforms act as the virtual communities in a classroom where the interested students can participate on a subject either through voice, instant messages to their colleagues, live chats, blog as well as video conferencing. The Board responsible for ensuring that the students get online access to social-networks technologies encourages the instructors to collaborate and engage the students in a classroom when teaching through social networks so that the students can understand the subject as well as enjoy the learning process. Social networks if used appropriately by instructors motivate the students to have self-efficacy, improves their interpersonal communication skills
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E-learning tools are design platforms that can either be locally hosted or web-based. These tools help the educator to come up with designs that are meaningful while incorporating and engaging multimedia and content. This will enhance an efficient and effective learning experience to the disabled learners. E-learning tools have the advantage of ensuring that teachers and the students are always up-to-date with the most recent information as the world keeps on changing. Some of the e-learning authoring tools include adobe presenter, adobe captive, advanced e-learning builder and accordant capture station.
As an assistive innovation, Text-To-Speech (TTS) programming is intended to enable students to experience issues perusing standard print. Regular print incapacities can incorporate visual deficiency, dyslexia or any visual disability, learning handicap or other physical condition that obstructs the capacity to peruse. In any case, different scholars can profit from TTS innovation, for example, students that have extreme autism, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and a scholarly handicap. The innovation works by examining and afterward perusing the words to the student in an incorporated voice, utilizing an extensive number of discourse sounds that make up words in any given setting. With the advances in discourse combination, TTS innovation is more exact and similar than any time in recent memory. The text-to-speech tools assist students with talking disabilities to express their thoughts and ideas which improve interpersonal skills. The fact that they can express their ideas and thoughts in an effective way improve their personal life. Also, those with typing disabilities are assisted by these tools in their career development.
The Intel Reader is a versatile handheld gadget that utilizes TTS innovation to peruse printed message loud. It includes a high-resolution camera which captures printed content, changes it to digital content and reads it to the client. Amid playback, words are featured as they are perused loudly, and the client can stop and have the gadget spell out featured words. The accessible Intel Portable Capture Station works as a platform for the Intel Reader to effortlessly and rapidly capture content from books and other records. The Intel Reader is sufficiently portable to be used on many occasions. Students can likewise exchange content from a home PC, or save produced sound forms of pieces of literature to a PC. Accessible voices change in gender, pitch, and speed. The Intel reader helps students with visual impairments to read the text and comprehend diagrams; these will enhance their communication skills and their interpersonal coherence.
The Kurzweil 3000 is a pioneer in TTS programming for people that struggle with literacy. Notwithstanding a scope of TTS includes, the full-featured program that incorporates capacities that can help students in different areas, possibly favoring those individuals with a non-print handicap or the people who may not ordinarily consider a TTS program. Examples of the features include:
• Multiple TTS voices
• Support for 18 dialects and tongues
• Talking spell-checker
• Picture dictionary designs for more than 40,000 words
• Text
• Tools for test taking, paper composing, note taking and reference
The Kurzweil 3000 endeavors to give students a multi-sensory way to deal with literacy learning. It is accessible to Windows and Macintosh operating systems. It also allows students to scan a printed material and display it on a screen with the aid of optical character recognition. This comes in handy for students with visual disabilities especially in the workplace and thus enhancing their career development.
Graphic organizers can be powerful in helping students to sort out their considerations amid the written work process. As an assistive innovation, realistic coordinators can be a solid decision for students with dysgraphia or disorders of written expressions — especially the calculated parts of writing. Graphic organizers work by helping the student organize a strategy. Contingent upon the kind of writing, the graphic organizers, can prompt the author to depict an object, outline a course of occasions or play out some other assignment that can help in arranging the piece. Graphic organizers are of different technological sophistication and type.
With the help of Low-Tech Hand-outs, Graphic organizers need not be advanced technology wise; actually, they can exist in straightforward hand-out form. Sample hand-outs are available at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Company. The sandwich chart can help students with paragraph composing. This sequence chart helps with narrative composing and the requesting of events. The sense diagram is intended for descriptive writing, where writers are prompted for terms that describe and express a thing. Many other sample charts are in existence and can help students with, for all intents and purposes, any writing.
Draft: Builder is a writing apparatus that incorporates outlining, note taking and draft recording capacities to break the process of writing into three stages. Utilizing a graphical coordinator, the program enables the student to visualize the work and put information into the right spot without conceptualizing the entire procedure. It at that point automates the way toward making the paper, where the student can move what is written in each note to the unfinished copy.
Other features incorporate a talking spell checker that uses TTS technology, a list of sources device, a dictionary and the capacity for educators to include locked text into the program for future guidance. Draft: Builder is accessible for Windows and Macintosh.
An assortment of assistive listening systems, or hearing assistive innovation, can help students who are hard of hearing or almost deaf, and also those with other hearing-related and learning issues. As per the National Association for the Deaf, assistive listening systems can be utilized to improve the scope and viability of portable amplifiers and cochlear implants, or by students who needn't bother with those instruments yet at the same time require help hearing. Assistive listening systems utilize a microphone, a kind of transmission technology and a gadget for capturing and conveying the sound to the ear. The particular transmission technology utilized as a part of the framework is commonly what contrasts one kind of assistive listening system from the rest.
As per the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA), FM frameworks are the best alternatives for students with sensorineural hearing loss. The most widely recognized sort of hearing loss for all ages, sensorineural hearing loss happens when the internal ear (cochlea) or nerve pathways from the inward ear to the mind are damaged. FM systems work using radio communication technology. With a transmitter amplifier and a recipient, the instructor and the student can keep up a predictable sound level not taking into consideration the background noise or the distance between them. Furthermore, ASHA takes note of that the listening aid microphone can be disconnected, so the understudy can focus on the educator alone.
Sound-field systems are a good alternative for classrooms that need to help to listen to all students in the class. ASHA takes note of that these systems advantage students that have hearing loss, as well as those that have other sound-related and learning issues, for example, dialect delays, articulation disorders, central auditory processing disorder and advancement delays. Furthermore, stable field systems can be of use for students who are learning the English language as their second dialect. Sound-field frameworks utilize an amplifier that propagates sound through speakers mounted in the classroom. In classrooms that have great acoustics, sound can travel equitably all through space, eradicating barriers of separation between the speaker and every audience. (King, 1999).
Sip-and-puff systems are utilized by students who have challenges related to mobility, for example, motor skill disability and paralysis. These systems take into consideration control of a PC, cell phone or some other form of technology by the student moving the gadget with his or her mouth. Like a joystick, the student can move the controller toward any path and tap on different navigational tools utilizing either a sip or a puff. An on-screen console enables the student to type in similar movements. Sip-and-puff frameworks are a kind of switch gadget, which alludes to the technology in place of a PC keyboard or mouse. Other switch gadgets incorporate buttons or different articles that a student can touch, push, draw, kick or do some other basic activity that would then be able to control the gadget. (Miller, & Norton, 2003)
The Jouse3 is a Sip and-puff system that enables children to control a gadget utilizing any part of the mouth, cheek, button or tongue. Because of its exactness and fast reaction, home clients can use it for drawing or PC games. It can mount to the desktop, a bed frame or some other sort of structure; it doesn’t require a headpiece put on the body of the client. The item is used in Windows, Macintosh, Linux and Unix based PCs, also Android and iOS cell phones. It can support maybe a couple of outer switches and has two sorts of mouthpieces.
Inception Instruments offers a scope of sip and-puff items that students can use to control an electronic gadget. Utilizing a head mounted or gooseneck UI, or accessible tubing for a custom arrangement, the student, can control a mouse, joystick or console effortlessly. The essential system is powered with the use of USB technology. The item bolsters Windows, Macintosh and Linux based PCs. Two pressure switches associate the framework to the UI solution for use on electronic gadgets. (Marfilius, & Fonner, 2003, October).
Proofreading software as a branch of assistive innovation goes well beyond the run of the typical editing features that are found in a word document processing system, for example, amending words much of the time incorrectly spelled by students with dyslexia. Various features offered in this classification can enable students to work on their English writing skills and thus become a better writer. Effective writing skill will be of help to the student at work especially when preparing paper-work. The student will also be better his or her chance of writing a good job acquisition curriculum vitae and consequently boost their career development although essentially focused towards people with dyslexia. Proofreading software can be useful to those with a learning handicaps that make it difficult for them to write and read with ease.
Ginger offers a few features that can help students with dyslexia and other learning disabilities with composing. It is additionally intended for speakers of dialects other than English. Examples of these features include:
• Grammar checker that breaks down a text to check for any mistakes or incorrect spellings. For example, Ginger can perceive whether “there,” “their” or “they’re” ought to be used as a part of a sentence, which is a typical error in writing.
• Word expectation and sentence rephrasing apparatuses that can be useful for students practicing how to develop sentences legitimately.
• TTS advantages so that students can hear what they’ve composed.
• A personal trainer that gives training sessions because of past mistakes made by the student.
A variety of math tools can help students struggling with math problems. They are mostly found in students with learning disability known as dyscalculia. The general characteristics of dyscalculia are the inability to grasp numbers and lack of understanding of mathematics. Those with dyscalculia, blindness, and fine motor skill disability can use assistive technology. Math talk as a speech recognition system in the form of a software program for mathematics can be used by students with this sort of disability. In this way, students can do math tasks by simply speaking into a microphone that is on their computer. The program functions like a math sheet in electronic form, and this allows the student to organize their work as if t were on paper. Math Simulation is an example of Math Tools that enables those students with dyscalculia disorder to visualize mathematical formulas, problems and provide solved examples. This assistive tool offers an elaborate understanding of the applications and formulas for certain math problems. Math simulation provides videos and mathematical animations containing solved mathematical concepts that help them visualize the solution.( Minas, & Burenstein, 1995).
The advancement of user-friendly assistive technology has brought so many student assistive tools at their disposal. These tools help will assist the students to study and grow academically, personally, socially and professionally and help them catch up with their colleagues. To fully utilize this awesome assistive technology, the instructors and teachers must develop a well-organized plan or system that will assist the student fully benefit from the assistive tools. In addition to the assistive tools, the instructors need to be well qualified to teach using this technology and should have re regular check-ins to check out the difficulties experienced by the children and help make a difference to the students with disabilities.
References
Marfilius, S., & Fonner, K. (2003, October).Sorting through word prediction programs. Paper presented at the Closing the Gap Annual Conference, Minneapolis, MN.
Miller, C. K., & Norton, M. P. (2003).Making god real for a new generation. Ministry with millennials born from 1982 to 1999. Nashville, TN: Discipleship Resources.
Minas, J., Biros, J., & Burenstein, B. (1995).Giving voice to student writing: Exploring the uses of speech recognition and speech synthesis in a writing curriculum. Philadelphia: Drexel University Literacy Project, Drexel University.
Myklebust, H. (1973).Development and disorders of written language: Studies of normal and exceptional children (Vol. 2). New York: Grune & Stratton.
Parette, H. P. (2004, April).Millennial children in a digital age: Assistive technology futures in special education.Paper presented at the Council for Exceptional Children Annual Convention and Expo, New Orleans, LA.
Parette, H. P. (2005). Assistive technology (AT) device. In J. T. Neisworth & P. S. Wolfe (Eds.), The autism encyclopedia (p. 15). Baltimore: Brookes.
Katims, D. (2000). Literacy instruction for people with mental retardation: Historical highlights and contemporary analysis. Education and Training in Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities, 35, 3–15
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