Adaptive and Assistive Technologies

Google Slides

Kasey Bell, author of "Shake Up Learning", calls Google Slides the "Swiss army knife of G-Suite" (Bell, 2020). Check out her full blog post called "25 Things You Didn’t Know Google Slides Could Do". For example, a teacher could create a slide with links, directions, instruction, and activities for an individual or a group of students. This allows the teacher to provide individualized instruction in one place for all students.

For example, a teacher could present the class with a reading passage. However, the teacher knows several students comprehend passages better when they listen to the passage, rather than reading it. So, the teacher creates a slide for the students who need the auditory support, and the slide has the passage being read aloud by the teacher. This allows struggling readers or students with vision impairment to still access the text and engage in the learning for the day.

Google Classroom

In Google Classroom teachers can leave feedback in the form of comments. Many teachers are unaware that they can leave links to websites and video in the comments. This could be beneficial for helping students who need assistive technology. For example, a teacher could leave a comment with a video that provides audio and visual directions for a student who is a reluctant reader rather than typed directions on how to fix an assignment.

Google Calendar and Google Keep

For students with multiple courses and teachers, it can be a challenge to keep track of all the tasks and assignments that need to be completed. G-Suite includes calendar and list tools to help keep students organized.

If the teacher is using Google Classroom, the assignments are organized on a calendar for the teacher and students to have a visual reminder of the upcoming assignments that are due. The teacher can also add event reminders to the calendar for things such as exams and field trips. The student can use the calendar to track when assignments are due and use Google Keep to create a list of things that need to be accomplished in order to complete the assignment.

Other digital student organizers include MyHomework.

Penultimate

Penultimate is an app for iPad from the creators of Evernote. Penultimate allows users to write on their tablets like they would on paper, but then users can search their handwritten notes for keywords and specific information. This would be beneficial for students who struggle with keeping notes and work organized, as they could search the notes in the app for keywords. This also allows handwritten notes to be shared easily, so a teacher could share notes with a student that struggles to focus during a lecture.

For more examples of assistive technology for taking notes, visit this post on www.understood.org.

Read&Write

Read&Write is an application from texthelp that is available as a Chrome extension and an app for most operating systems. Read&Write goes beyond the basic text to speech functions to create a dynamic tool that helps all students learn. I first learned about this tool in the context of helping ELL students, but it is a useful tool for all students.

Students have access to a wide range of tools, such as a picture dictionary which can provide visual information and context of a new word or concept to students. Students can highlight helpful or important information in the application and choose different colors for different topics or areas of interests. The app will then organize the highlighted information by color to help students organize and make sense of the information they are reading.

Other speech-to-text applications are mote and Reverb Record for Chrome. Both of these links have videos to demonstrate how to use these applications to help students succeed.