Assistive Technologies

  Recent cutting edge advances in assistive technology have served to bridge the gap in learning achievements for students with learning disabilities.  Through the use of these new classroom tools, teachers are able to help students progress to levels they never thought possible.  The tools help the students to overcome their disabilities by breaking social barriers and involving them in everyday classroom exercises.  At the same time, the tools aid the teachers so they don't have to spend extensive time aside with these students as it frees them to spread their attention equally throughout the classroom.
  This is quite well articulated in Josh's story.  Josh is a young boy with autism.  When Josh first started school he would not talk or interact with his teacher or other students.  He had a hard time focusing on in class activities and even vaguely participating.  However his teacher found this great learning tool, an AbleNet Super Talker, which would vocalize activities for Josh to make descisions about what he wanted to do that day at school.  This provided a safe and comfortable way for him to start social interactions with his teacher.  This tool helped to break the communication barrier first with his own internal problems by prompting him to vocalize what the Super Talker was telling him and then with his teacher by letting her question him for information he was receiving from the Super Talker. 
   This first step led the way for the implimentation of another extremely helpful tool made by the same company, the AbleNet Book Worm.  This device is attached to books and will narrate if prompted by the student.  The teacher ahead of time will record their voice into the device so that as the student reads along they will associate the reading with the teachers voice.  This was a giant leap for Josh.  With the help of the Book Worm, he became more comfortable first with communicating with the Book Worm which then led him to be more comfortable interacting with his teacher.  After some time reading books like this, Josh's teacher found that he was actually actively reading along with the Book Worm and found that he was able to answer inquisitive questions prompted by his teacher about what he was reading.
  So as we see through this story, with the aid of cutting edge classroom technology, students' disabilities can be overcome.  Without the help of these tools Josh may not be communicating or worse not learning.