Monday, October 24, 2016

#7 - Assistive Technology, Website Design, Diigo

According to the podcast, "adaptive or assistive technologies are technologies that help people with disabilities more effectively use computing equipment." Students could use voice recognition software instead of typing if unable to type or they can use technologies like brail printers if they are blind. I am quite familiar with the brailler in which they are referring to in the podcast. It is like a typewriter that produces raised bumps on the paper so that the people that are blind can read their completed work. Every summer I act as a voluntary mentor at a developmental sports camp (for children that are visually impaired) called Camp Abilities. I watched and assisted the kids as they typed "thank you" letters to all the donors of the camp that contributed food, equipment, and money. It was so awesome to see how efficient those machines are! That technology has dramatically increased educational opportunities for children that are visually impaired. Another piece of assistive technology they used was their canes to help navigate and prevent collisions. Since their sight is limited, and for some completely gone, they need the canes to feel their way around the world and stay safe. I take a particular interest in this subject because I plan to be an O&M instructor (orientation and mobility.) My job will be to teach them how to properly use this adaptive technology and many others. I don't foresee any specific challenges for adaptive technology in my classroom because I assume that FSU will prepare me to teach effectively and be well informed. The only challenge that comes to mind is the lack of money in the educational system and the possible limitation of how much assistive technology will be available to the students. From what I have been told, the technology is quite expensive.

To be honest, at first I completely hated the assignment. I had no idea where to even begin. But the further I dove into it, the more fun I had with it. I learned how to do everything through trial and error. I spent an enormous amount of time on my website and am pretty happy with my results. Here is a screenshot of one of my favorite pages of the website:
I couldn't figure out how to use the tockify thing though. I ended up using google calendar because it was too confusing. I think that the website would have been better if weebly offered some directional advice for first timers. I really liked how many options were available for the website though. I tried every button just to see what it did (which is probably why it took so long to complete.) The YouTube option was of particular interest to me. I thought that was a useful addition. Now that I know how to use weebly, it will be a lot more easy to do in the future. I plan on using it for my class websites in the future. 

Diigo was also a completely new experience for me. Everything we learned in class was new to me. I thought the annotation of articles was really cool. I can see that being of great use to both students and teachers. I also preferred books over the internet because I could write in them and highlight stuff to help study but now with diigo, websites offer the same capabilities. As a teacher, diigo is great to collaborate and share websites that prove beneficial to teaching. As a teacher, I can give and share ideas to students and teachers. It is an interactive website that will be very useful for future use in the classroom. Technology is great!

1 comment:

  1. I also was having a lot of problems at the beginning with trying to figure out how this website worked. Once I started getting the hang of it, it became easier for me to create a well-rounded website. Tockify was also very hard to add to my website, so I had to use Google Calendar.

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