My Experience with Assistive Technology and How I Will Use It in the Future.

A long time ago I used to work at public school as a teacher assistant.  I worked with exceptional children.  Some of them required multiple assistive technologies.  One of my students used to have hearing aids and when he arrived to school, he took them off and put on audio trainer.  Then the deaf child’s teacher put on the microphone to speak to help the child to hear better with a help of little sign language.  The teacher and I developed the cards that had pictures with words on them.  It helped him to point and understand what he was trying to do next.  For example, one of my teachers demonstrated a picture of a kid playing at the playground to a deaf child.  It helped tremendously because deaf people are very visual learners and they rely on what they see.

            In the future, I would like to continue to develop picture cards for children to read and recognize what they see such as picture schedules, word with pictures on multiple objects, and much more.  It would not only help children to recognize, but it would help with developing vocabulary skills, communication skills, sequential skills, and would help them make a connection from the pictures to the objects.  They will develop strong sense of print awareness, concept of book print, story sense, vocabulary development, phonologic awareness, alphabetic understanding, speech/print match, and control of reading and writing (Cook, Klein, & Tessier, p. 320-321).  When they grow older, they will develop a strong literacy skills as well.      

Reference:

Cook, R.E.,M.D. &Tessier, A. (2008).  Adapting early childhood curricula for children with Special Needs (7^th Ed).  Upper Saddle River, NJ:  Pearson Prentice Hall

Task Analysis

            Task Analysis of adaptive skills is the process of breaking down a skill area into its component parts (Cook, Klein, & Tessier, p. 239).  My choice on task analysis was to cut with the scissor.  I know that I was using this task for my focus child.  However, I believe that task analysis can work for every child whether they have disabilities or not.  I devised  task cards with pictures to help the children to read the words and look at the pictures to make the connections.  I am a firm believer that my focus child who has a poor fine motor skill would be very accommodated for having the task cards to follow through. 

            My task cards were showing the every step from the beginning to the ending with pictures demonstrating:

1.         Grab the scissors.

2.                  Pick up a piece of construction paper.

3.                  Insert your thumb into the big hole.

4.                  Insert your fingers into the crescent shaped hole.

5.                  Push the scissors as you open and close the scissor.

6.                  Place the scissor back on the shelf.

Reference:

Cook, R.E.,M.D. &Tessier, A. (2008).  Adapting early childhood curricula for children with Special Needs (7^th Ed).  Upper Saddle River, NJ:  Pearson Prentice Hall