Technology missing from Special Education

Technology can be helpful in many areas of special education. From aiding communication to assistive technologies that enrich the student's educational experience. Most of the commentary on this forum focuses on areas where educators have successfully integrated technology into their classroom. However, I have personally watched my mother (teacher for 30+ years) and sister (teacher for 8+ years) struggle with the sub-par technology used by their districts. In what ways could technology do a better job of meeting your Special Education needs? Which repetitive tasks could be automated in order to free up your time for more important things? How could student's needs be better addressed with technology? How could technology improve your communication with educators, parents and specialists in special education.

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Permalink Reply by michelle dodd on October 21, 2008 at 9:36pm

We use as much freeware as possible (see a collection here http://ability-programs-challengertafe.wikispaces.com/) but one of the things many of our adults struggle with is the sign up log in process and keeping track of all their passwords.

We have largely overcome this by using the same p/w and for multiple logins but of course this defeats the purpose of having a secure password!.. think we will look into some universal access passords for next year but of course not ever site has this feature enabled.

None the less I find the collection of tools at the above link give us a range of methods to enable our students to pursue their interest areas and express themselves in ways that suit.. of course it is by no means definitive and will always be a work in progress.. feel free to give feedback, thoughts, new tools, suggestions and by all means pass on

regards
Michelle

Permalink Reply by hochhaus on November 10, 2008 at 9:54pm

Michelle,

Excellent to hear you use as much freeware as possible. A lot of really great free (or open source) software exists and it is too bad if it gets looked over in education. (I use a lot of free software as well.) Thanks for the link to wikispaces.

You might already be familiar, but if you are taking about managing passwords to web applications and you use firefox several good password manager add ons exists (and are free):

* https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4133
* https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1275

Possibly they fit your needs.

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