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Assistive Technology Podcast
Details
Assistive Technology Podcast
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Assistive Technology Podcast
Assistive technology for diverse learners includes recorded books and digital books for reading, which are available on mobile devices or computers. High-interest, low-level books match students' interests and reading abilities. Speech-to-text software allows students to speak and have the computer type for writing. Graphic organizers help with organization and outlining. These technologies help students overcome limitations and improve their reading and writing abilities. Hello. I wanted to talk about technology for diverse learners. There are many assistive technologies that are available to help our diverse students. Many may ask, what is assistive technology? Well, my answer is, this is any technology device that meets the needs of a diverse student. Some examples that will help a student, especially in reading, this would be recorded books. This is an audio version that assists students with the visual impairments, and it also allows students to benefit from the read-aloud also, through the audio. Digital books, this is almost the same as a recorded book, but with a digital book, it is a recorded book that has the visual ability, or a student can do the read-aloud option, but it has the visual component in it, and it's also available on a mobile device or a computer. Then we have the high-interest, low-interest level books. This assists the students with interesting content, but this is also at their reading level, with their current reading ability, so the teachers, they will match what they're interested in, and then it will also be able to, you know, what they're not interested in, and then they'll have to look at what their reading ability is and adjust the books accordingly. With these resources, assistive technology is designed to help the students that have a reading disability to look past their limitations and allow the technology to improve their reading ability. Next, I would like to talk about two examples for writing in their assistive technologies. They have what you would call speech-to-text software, and this will allow a student to speak what they want the computer to type, and this assists the students so they don't have to actually write the material and the technology is assisting that. So, as they're speaking, the computer is actually texting or typing the information. Also, graphic organizers, they're actually an assistive technology example, and this allows the students to organize or outline the information through a software, through a program, and it actually will help them with their organization and be able to outline the information to make the writing process a little bit easier for them, and you can also use these graphic organizers for reading, for many different options. So, those are the two things that I wanted to talk about as far as assistive technology. That was the reading and the writing, and that's about it.