Special Needs Students and Teachers Benefit from Technology

Making it Work-Using Technology in a Classroom for Young Children with Disabilities by Barbara Pratt

Barbara Pratt wrote an enlightening article about her experiences and use of technology at the Develpmental Learning Program (DLP) in Cape Cod. The DLP is a collaborative program offering educational and therapeutic services to young children with multiple disabilities. Ms. Pratt spoke of several software and adaptive technology devices that afforded her students many opportunities to gain in language development, socio-emotional, cognitive , and physical development. By using the software and technology, not only did the students advance in these areas, but they became more independent and collaborative with one another through their exploration, learning and play. One of the main programs used by Ms. Pratt and her students is called Boardmaker. Boardmaker is a picture system for young non-verbal children that allows them to use preassigned pictures and symbols to use for communication in a variety of ways. Teachers may label the classroom with these easy to print out symbols and pictures and/or give students communication boards or charts to show and therefore communicate what they would like, where they are going, or a certain activity they would like to participate in. Ms. Pratt also cited other various software or communication technology helps used in her class. Among them was CheapTalk and BigMack, both systems that can add recorded language to devices for children to communicate. Also noted were various early childhood reading and language software programs and suggestions for adapting them for children with limited communication skills. Ms. Pratt gave a wealth of information for adapting screens, making simple adaptations for touching instead of manipulating a mouse, and more. She also emphasized the ease in which many programs and computer aids have helped make her special education paperwork, staff schedules, parent newsletters and time management tasks much easier and more professional looking.

This article was very exciting to me. As I move forward in the Special Education Credentialing program, I see the use of computers very important in my future classroom. Most often in a special education classroom, students will be at varying skill levels and developmental stages. To have the technology and programs available to place a child with a program or device that will help them individually will be very helpful. I especially enjoyed the information and illustrations provided in the article about the pictures, symbols and uses of the Boardmaker program. I am going to look into the cost of this program and also check with my elementary school special education staff to see if it is available there. I will definitely want to revisit this article by Ms. Pratt in the future to see what available technology I can use from the analysis and information she gave.