Week 10 Reflection
These are the notes that I took during the class. I took notes reading through the SD62 accessibility plan. As there are so many schools being built in the SD62 district they have the chance to build super accessable schools as they are able to design the schools. With the schools that are already built there are things that can be added to the schools such as a ramp on the exterior if there is not already one but it is harder to make footprint of the school more accessible where as when building from scratch the sky is the limit.
When I think back to my school experience there were some ways that adaptive technology was used. The first one that comes to mind was one of my best friends growing up was almost fully deaf in one ear and 50% deaf in the other one. She wore hearing aids and in elementary school the teacher would wear a microphone that connected to her hearing aid so that she could hear better. I have also worked with a couple students in camps that wore hearing aids and the coaches would wear microphones to ensure that she could hear us. The only thing with the microphones is that if the microphone is on the student can hear you at all times so the mom of the student I taught warned us of this to make sure we turned it on when we needed it and off when we did not.
In my L2P there were a couple students that used read to write while doing literacy. This was helpful for them as they could have the computer read to them as well as it has the ability to define words the students don’t know. The students highlight the words they don’t know and the computer compiles a list with definitions and visuals for them to understand the words. I wish this was used in my elementary school classroom because it would have been very helpful for me.
I think the glasses analogy over simplifies the idea of adaptive technology for a couple reasons. Glasses is an object that fixes the problem where as some adaptive technology requires changing the environment rather than having something fix the issues such as glasses. As well as glasses fixes someones vision where as sometimes adaptive technologies are needed to support multiple things.