The Family Center on Technology and Disability
Assistive Technology Works
Newsletter
| Newsletter for August-September 2008 |
AT & High Incidence Disabilities: Goodbye Darkness In this Issue...
For generations, children with high incidence disabilities faced frustration and failure, unable to make effective use of existing classroom tools. Parents and teachers often felt anxiety and sometimes resignation, wanting to help but lacking the knowledge and tools to do so. The information age has brought a wide range of technology tools that offer hope and the promise of success in the classroom and beyond. Although significant obstacles remain, a slowly growing corps of technology-savvy educators, parents, and students are bringing a new outlook to classrooms. The insertion of mandatory AT consideration for students with IEPs in the 1997 IDEA reauthorization captured the attention of IEP teams and parents. Yet recognition of technology’s possibilities for kids with LDs and other high incidence disabilities has often taken a back seat to very real and pressing local and state budgetary considerations. Nevertheless, pioneers push ahead, seeking ways, such as accessing free AT on the web and implementing universal design concepts that benefit all students. Karen Janowski Speaks Her Masters studies brought professional and personal dividends. Professionally, she found herself at the spearhead of classroom AT evolution. Personally, her education aided her in assisting her son, who has learning disabilities, and better understanding her successful designer/builder husband who has reading challenges. Today, she works closely with individual high incidence students, connecting them with the technology they need. Most of her work, she notes, is done outside the classroom, including during the summer months “when students are not burdened by academic pressures.” Although she teaches professional development courses in AT for educators on a one-shot basis, she is a strong advocate for ongoing professional development in order to remain current with evolving assistive and educational technology. In addition to her consultant duties, she is an instructor in the Simmons College Graduate Department of Education and a successful candidate for public office. “I was elected to the Reading school committee this year after losing the year before when I didn’t campaign much. I’m an educator and not a politician but I learn quickly. This year I ran against two incumbents. My daughter, who has a political job in Washington, warned me that incumbents almost always win. Nevertheless, this year I crushed the competition, winning by about 1,000 votes. I was shocked!” Supporting our interview with Ms. Janowski are resources aimed at helping parents, educators and all those who support children with high incidence disabilities better understand the relationship between technology and learning disabilities. We also feature members of our Knowledge Network. The members spotlighted this month focus on AT and high incidence disabilities. We invite you to contact these members for further information. Please share this newsletter with other organizations, families and professionals who may benefit from it. We invite you to visit us at http://www.fctd.info. We welcome feedback, new members and all who contribute to our growing knowledge base. AT & High Incidence Disabilities: Independence is Her Goal
While appreciation for the goal of AT-aided independence has increased in the years since she earned her Masters in AT from Boston’s Simmons College and adopted AT consulting in public schools as a career, there is plenty of room for improvement, she admits. The independence movement’s ignition button, she recalls, was pinpointed by AT authority Dave Edyburn. “Dave points out that the new language included in the reauthorization of IDEA in 1997, which stipulated that all students on IEPs had to be considered for AT, created four million students who were potential AT users.” Most of those students, she notes, were those with high incidence disabilities. “According to the U.S. Department of Education, 96% of children with disabilities attend schools within their own districts. Those are the high incidence kids who in earlier years had been overlooked, like my son, my husband – and swimmer Michael Phelps, the sensation of the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Those were the kids about whom I was sometimes advised, ‘They’ve got great ideas, but they just can’t get those ideas down on paper.’ Those were the kids about whom it was often said, ‘If they just tried harder…’ or, ‘If they can do it sometimes, why can’t they do it all the time?’ Those are the kids I work with, the ones who view themselves as ‘dumb’ or ‘stupid’ or ‘incapable’ or ‘incompetent.’ I say, ‘We must value the skills of all of our kids and help them to succeed.’” Keeping It Simple via Universal Design
She adheres to the “three-click” rule when it comes to website accessibility and classroom technology. “The idea is to get to the purpose of a website within three clicks. If more than three clicks are required the child is lost. The point is to keep things simple.” In that category she strongly recommends Microsoft Word, “which has some features built in that really benefit all kids.” For example, she notes, “the ability to insert sound objects throughout a Word document can be a very powerful tool. Students can record answers, which enables those students ‘who have great ideas but can’t get them down on paper’ to record answers on a test right into the Word document.” Teachers, she says, can imbed prompts throughout a Word document that students can listen to. “These devices and others make it much easier to help students demonstrate what they know.” Another useful feature, she explains, is the ability to customize fonts, “which benefits students who prefer a specific font that makes it easier for them to read. It’s easy to change the font size, the font color, the font color background, the highlighting tool, the form tool, the outline tool, the collapse and expand tool.” Also available, she adds, is a free text-to-speech download called WordTalk that is available from http://WordTalk.org.uk. “This is a free text-speech program that highlights each word as the word is read and which provides a talking spell checker, and a talking thesaurus. Unfortunately, this free software tool is currently only available for PC use and is a Word add-on.” “I Love Free Tools”
She urges students to create Jott folders for specific school subjects. “That way they can record what their homework assignments are each day or the main points made in a particular class and what the class questions are for the day. They can send themselves lists of what they need to do when they get home from school or when they arrive at school.” She continues, “I’ll be working today with a visually impaired college student and I will show him how to use Jott with his cellphone, the one tool that he carries with him everywhere. There are so many ways that Jott can be used and it is, I emphasize, a free speech-to-text service. One of my friends uses Jott’s reminder capabilities when she goes grocery shopping. It’s an excellent tool for our kids with high incidence disabilities.” Karen Janowski, blogger, highly recommends a blog post by Ira David Socol, (http://speedchange.blogspot.com/2008/05/toolbelt-theory-for-everyone.html) an adult with learning disabilities whose views have greatly influenced hers. “On his blog, Ira has written about what he calls ‘Toolbelt Theory’ in which I believe so strongly. He and I believe that we must offer these possibilities to our students and let them know what is available so that they can then develop their own toolbelts and choose the tools that work best to match their individual situations.” Withholding this information, she declares, “would constitute malpractice on our part.” Unfortunately, there are many high school students with LDs for whom text-to-speech has never been demonstrated. “The result is that they have struggled with decoding, fluency and ultimately, comprehension. Referencing the IDEA requirement that the general curriculum be made available and accessible to all students, Ms. Janowski asks, “What do we do if they are reading two or three grade levels below their grade? They still require access to grade level curriculum, so are they inadvertently being set up for failure? When we provide them with text-to-speech they now have the ability to listen to grade level curriculum and not be at a disadvantage.”
As a bonus, she notes, “research has shown that when text-to-speech is offered to students as a compensation method their reading scores improve. I saw this work for my high school-age son, although fluency remains an issue for him. However, because he was seeing multi-syllabic words multiple times his reading did improve in high school. Unfortunately, by then his desire to read was gone.” With free text-to-speech, she often suggests that a higher quality voice be purchased. “The website http://www.nextup.com/ has several excellent quality voices. Kids can listen to a number of voices before they decide on the one they like the most. The voices cost $30-$35 apiece. For those who are using the Mac, the Leopard Operating system has a very good quality voice built right into it at no additional cost.” She is enthusiastic about many Google applications such as customizing an iGoogle home page, Google Docs and Google Sketchup. Voice Thread http://voicethread.com/ she notes “is another free multimedia tool that has impressive capabilities and is, in my opinion, the best tool for universal design for all grade levels, K-12. Voice Thread is an online media album that can hold any type of media – images, documents and videos – and allows users to make comments five ways, using voice (via microphone or video), text, audio file or video (with a webcam) and share them with anyone. In the world of educational and assistive technology, she says, wikis and blogs are an effective way to impart information for use by educators, parents and students. “Anything digital is now accessible to about 99.5% of computer users. Once it’s digital a voice can be attached to it, the text of the size can be easily adjusted and it can be retrieved easily. Organizational issues, therefore, can be greatly decreased. The less paper we use the better it is for our kids who struggle with organization.” Using the SETT Method to a “T” Her preferred consulting environment is the inclusive classroom. “I think that that is the case for anyone working in special education. When we can keep our students in the classroom then they are not missing anything. Every time that they are removed from the classroom they are missing something that the rest of the students in their class are not missing.” On this subject Lisa Parisi, a fifth grade teacher who co-teaches with a special educator, is a favored blogger (http://lisaslingo.blogspot.com/). “I follow her online as part of my professional learning network. I finally got a chance to meet her recently. She blogged about how she used a co-teaching model in her class so that the students never left her class. Every one was successful with their state-mandated testing. She was successful, she wrote, because she was able to imbed universal design, keep her students in her classroom and modify the curriculum appropriately for all her students. I’d love to see all teachers adopt a similar approach.” Ms. Janowski also favors the video “Animal School,” www.raisingsmallsouls.com, which she cites in her blog. The video, she explains, is a metaphor for the various skills children are taught in school and how they approach learning. “Using animals as the metaphor in the video demonstrates that there are all kinds of learners in every classroom and reveals the unintended consequences when we overlook each child’s unique skills.” She adds that the video points out what can often happen to students who are removed from the classroom: “They can potentially lose their edge in the subject from which they are removed.” Injecting a note of irony, she says, “I can recall when my daughter, who does not have learning issues, wanted to be able to leave the class when she was in elementary school; she was jealous of the kids who were called from her class and wanted see what she was missing! I think, though, that if she was among the kids who had to leave the class 2-3 times a week she would not have been so envious.” The Value of Professional Development When possible she favors working directly with her students. “I try to expand my work with kids outside of the conventional classroom. The summer is a good time to help them develop their own technology tool kit because there are few academic expectations involved.” However, she says that her most effective teaching approaches occur in a scenario in which “teachers are on board and understand that all kids can learn and that all kids can benefit from the tools and strategies teachers build into their classrooms.” As a classroom outsider, she concedes, “it is sometimes frustrating for me when I can’t seem to impact positive change as powerfully as I think I should.” When she evaluates students “I always talk with the educators and parents. I observe each student and get a sense of the school culture, because every classroom is different, as is every school and teacher. I try to recognize and respect those differences.” Ms. Janowski describes her approach to online professional development: “When I create wikis or online resources or videos that can be accessed via Teacher Tube http://www.teachertube.com/ that ongoing ability to review what they learn in a just-in-time, anytime-anywhere-anyplace learning environment is the most effective. I provide blogs, wikis and videos to teachers to review as needed. What I am actually doing is modeling what I would love for them to make available to their own students.” Recently, she attended a meeting about a college student with attention, organization and vision issues. “The disabilities specialist working with this student was giving him verbal directions only. Not surprisingly, those directions were lost to the student. There was too much information for him to digest. Instead, she asserts, “the disabilities specialist needed to create a video for the student that featured her directions or use an alternative method for him to review at a later date.” The purpose of this approach, Ms. Janowski adds, “is that when the student returned home and wanted to review her instructions he could watch the video rather than trusting his memory. These are examples of what I believe are effective approaches. If I model effectively for teachers my hope is they will model effectively for students.”
Barriers, Solutions – and Two Modest Proposals What she finds “amazing” is that in 2008, 11 years after the 1997 reauthorization of IDEA, when AT consideration was inserted into federal law, acceptance of this mandatory consideration is not yet universal. This represents a significant barrier, in her opinion. “The fact is,” she declares, “in order for AT implementation to be effective, AT must be discussed at every IEP meeting.”
Speaking of budget issues, she continues, “there are ways to mitigate them as they apply to AT and educational technology.” First, she declares, “we can get rid of textbooks, which create their own barriers. There is no evidence that textbooks are superior as learning tools over other instructional methods.” Textbooks, she remarks, “are difficult for many kids for several reasons: their readability and their weight, to name just two. Textbooks are an inflexible modality. They are not accessible to many kids. A considerable amount of money would be saved if used alternatives to textbooks. It would help, too, if we re-evaluated assigning one-to-one paraprofessionals to so many students and instead spent those funds on effective technology that would help students become more independent.” Her experience with one-to-one paraprofessionals has demonstrated, she says, that too many students learn helplessness and dependence instead of independence. “When students graduate, what happens when those paraprofessionals do not move on with them? If we targeted these two areas we would find that there would be funds available for AT.” The free resources will be beneficial for many students but they are not appropriate for all students, Ms. Janowski claims. “In the case of free technology, one size does not fit all. Some students will benefit from accessibility to Kurzweil, WYNN, Solo by Don Johnston, Clicker 5 and Intellitools Classroom Suite to name just a few software tools. Those tools will be absolutely necessary for some students in our schools.” The Supportive Role of Parents in Interventions According to Ms. Janowski, her student-centered approach helps students to be more proactive and to know what to ask for. It also helps inform IEP meetings, especially if a student can say, “Yes, this device works for me.” Such student advocacy in IEP meetings is often a challenge, she notes. “My experience has shown me that there is an imbalance. The student-teacher relationship is an imbalanced one. In my son’s case, it was written into his IEP that he would self-advocate as one of the goals of his IEP. I disagreed with that provision. He had learned that when he advocated for himself, often little or nothing resulted. He learned that very quickly.” The other aspect of this imbalance, she explains, “is that kids are often reluctant to make requests because they know that they are dependent on their teacher for their grade. Educators must appreciate that imbalance so that we can help support and advocate for the student.” Through a Glass Brightly As noted earlier, she sees great potential in cellphone technololgy. “Cellphone technology already puts the power of technology in kids’ pockets. The irony is that we have told students that they cannot bring their cellphones into the classroom, but I believe that cellphone technology shows the most promise for students as a classroom tool. Beyond cellphone technology I believe that the wave of the future are online assistive technology tools such as WriteOnline by Cricksoft http://www.cricksoft.com/uk/writeonline/.” Aimed at upper primary students and those in secondary schools and colleges, WriteOnline shows a scaleable page view, familiar tools and menus but features built-in tools for writing support, including integrated speech, word prediction, word banks and writing frames. Students can submit their writing to teachers online for commenting and marking; teachers can benefit from pasted text and from analytic tools that track spelling corrections. Ironically, Ms. Janowski hopes that the tech-rich classroom that she envisions will not include AT consultants like her. “To be truthful, I would love to become obsolete as an AT consultant, because my obsolescence would mean that AT consideration, integration, information and implementation is happening so effectively that I have worked myself out of a job and that I am no longer necessary. Unfortunately, however, we are not there yet – but I have hope.” RESOURCES ARTICLES Making Informed Assistive Technology Decisions for Students with High Incidence Disabilities
WEBSITES Club NDSS
Create a Graph Intellitools
KNOWLEDGE NETWORK MEMBERS National Organization of Caring for Kids (NOCK) For further information on NOCK, contact: Abilities! For additional information on Abilities!, contact: The STAR Center
For more information on the center, contact: Texas A&M University: Project CABS For additional information on Project CABS, contact: T.K. Martin Center In order to empower individuals with disabilities through leading edge technologies the T.K. Martin Center for Technology & Disability maintains a state of the art clinical, research and training program focusing modern technologies, in a comprehensive and integrated manner, to the needs of persons with disabilities. Project Director: Jacqueline Hess
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There is light at the end of the tunnel, and it is not a freight train barreling toward us. Instead it is the glow of the promise of technology evolving fast and connecting with the aspirations of kids with high incidence disabilities – usually learning disabilities (LDs) – and the parents, educators and administrators who support them as a new school year begins.
“In education, there often appeared to be an insufficient level of appreciation for promoting independence among all kids, especially those with high incidence disabilities, and in promoting methods that are successful in that regard,” declares Karen Janowski. “That’s what originally sparked my interest in assistive technology, because AT removes barriers to learning and gives kids additional ways to demonstrate what they know.”
In her work with children with high incidence disabilities, mainly learning disabilities (LDs) and cognitive challenges, she says that she has enjoyed success with several consumer technology applications. “I am an aggressive proponent of using technology that is readily available and easy to use, because I find that teachers are more willing to integrate what they have available to them and what they know how to use.”
For cellphone technology, she recommends a program called Jott.com. “Jott.com is my new brain,” she exclaims. “It enables the user to call Jott.com, which responds when called by asking cellphone users who they wish to call. I often use Jott as a reminder source. Jott will ask me, ‘Who do you want to call?’ I record a reminder message about something I may have just worked on with a student, for example, and Jott will convert my speech to text and send it to me as an email or save it in my personalized Jott folder online. Jott is very, very useful to students of all abilities.
She continues, “We wonder why students who have reading challenges have a vocabulary that isn’t as well developed. If they are choosing not to read or are reading at their readability level they are not being exposed to grade level vocabulary.” Text-to-speech, she insists, provides exposure to grade level vocabulary. “Given its importance, text-to-speech must be available on every computer in every classroom. When it’s available the kids who need it will use it, which places it firmly in the universal design category.
Ms. Janowski continues to offer and encourage professional development, with a caveat. “One-shot professional development is not as effective as ongoing professional development, a theory that has been proven many times.” In addition, she comments, “adult learners who take professional development courses need to see the value of the course, just like kids in school do.”
Language is used in the classroom “but does not work well for many kids,” she comments. “We give them verbal direction constantly. For kids on the autism spectrum, for example, that approach can be very overwhelming. Instead, we want to tap into their visual strengths. Many kids on the autism spectrum work very well with computers. Therefore, when we use the computer as an instructional tool we tap into their strengths.”
What is necessary to overcome these barriers, she comments, “is a commitment by each state DOE [Department of Education] to address the value of AT for all kids.” In Massachusetts, she points out, “AT is buried in the IEP.” In other states, however, “there is a check box on the IEP that asks, ‘Has AT been considered?’ In some states, the answer defaults to ‘yes’ because AT must be considered.” On the state and federal level, she continues, “AT should be made available but it should not be an unfunded mandate. In addition, and this is important in an era of severe budget constraints at all levels, it should be made known that there are many free tools that are available online that were not available just a few years ago.”
The organization aims to connect chronically ill children with appropriate AT no matter the cost of the technology. Referrals are accepted through certified technology partners. The recipient approval process is analyzed by several independent sources, including NOCK’s medical advisory council. The organization’s “Expressions” program provides augmentative and alternative communication devices for children with conditions that include cerebral palsy, autism, Down syndrome as well as other neurological diseases that disable speech and communication. After obtaining needed devices NOCK customizes them to meet the needs of individual children. The organization also considers requests for robotic and wheelchair mounting of AAC devices. Another program, “Wheelchairs for Kids,” provides custom-molded wheelchairs with seating systems to children who need them. NOCK also considers requests for lifts, ramps, standers, toddler seating and other assistive and rehabilitative devices associated with seating and mobility.
Founded in 1952, Abilities maintains facilities that educate and train young people with disabilities. Named for the organization’s founder, Henry Viscardi, the Henry Viscardi School educates children with severe medical and physical disabilities. The school serves about 200 children annually in grades pre-K-12. The Smeal Learning Center is a training facility offering a comprehensive array of training and related services to the educational, research, technology and employment programs within Abilities!, as well as to organizations and business enterprises from the larger community. The Abilities! Global Institute identifies, researches and promotes innovative and promising practices in special education and rehabilitation for individuals with disabilities through the establishment of collaboratives with universities. The Kornreich Technology Center showcases state-of-the-art AT for children and adults and provides information, demonstrations, technology evaluations, and training in AT and its impact on individuals with disabilities.
The center is a model demonstration, resource and training center featuring AT, assistive aids and support services for children and adults regardless of their ability to pay. STAR serves children and adults with physical disabilities, learning delays, autism, attention deficit disorder, autism, spinal cord injury, cerebral palsy, developmental delays, neuromuscular disorder, head trauma, sensory dysfunction, communication disorder, vision loss or impairments and emotional and behavioral problems. Star Center programs include: 
A&M’s educational psychology department features the Comprehensive Academic and Behavior Support (CABS), a high incidence disabilities program that prepares students to critically evaluate and deliver high-quality, evidence-based prevention and intervention services. CABS prepares students to work not only with students with identified high incidence disabilities, but also with the general education and linguistically diverse students who are at-risk for behavioral and learning problems. According to the university, this program “is grounded in the scientific knowledge of effective practices and application of those practices in a three-tiered prevention/intervention model for meeting the needs of students with high incidence disabilities.”
The Mission of the T.K. Martin Center for Technology & Disability is to ensure that persons with disabilities are able to continually benefit from technological solutions and advances in the field of assistive technology.
Academy for Educational Development (AED) 1825 Connecticut Avenue, NW 7th Floor Washington, DC 20009-5721
phone: (202) 884-8068 fax: (202) 884-8441 email: fctd@aed.org
Copyright 2010