Assistive Technology

 Assistive Technologies that support Universally Designed Lessons are abundant.  In fact, when searching for resources, it is easy to get lost on the World Wide Web. There are many lessons that are already set up and just need to be tweaked to a specific class.  I have learned about many Internet based resources by reading others' lessons.  Here are a few:

The Wiki Site: http://edltechtoolkit.wikispaces.com is just one of those amazing sites that offer the labyrinth experience of wandering among great to even better resources

It is so important for all students to keep learning while they are learning to read; therefore, I am always eager to find high interest, low readability materials for older students.  The Multimedia and Storytelling resources seem to be the ideal way to promote learning and interaction with written material.  Apps like Triptico allow for teachers to create specialized and interactive lessons that teach through pictures, concept sorts, some words, and visuals.  For students with reading and writing challenges it is difficult to stay engaged in reading since the decoding of the words is so laborious and time consuming - they can't attend to the concepts and may forget previously read sentences because our working memories only hold so much information at a time.  Universally Designed Lessons, provide these struggling students with experiences they learn from, not struggle through.

Triptico:

 http://www.triptico.co.uk/

Written response can also be challenging for students with reading challenges; Videolicious, Animoto and Voicethread can provide the solution.  These programs all facilitate student response, reflection and sharing  in ways that engage more than one of the senses.  Students can use more or less visuals and reflect on others' and their own work in a variety of different ways.  What a liberating experience from the traditional paper and pencil method.  Cyber Schools are schools of choice for many students who shy away from face to face interactions, but thrive in the virtual world.  There programs allow these marginalized students to interact with material that they would otherwise be too reserved to discuss.

Videolicious:  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=boeyc6oscU8&noredirect=1