Lecture Monday 4/20

In class on monday we had a guest speaker from PATINS Project. PATINS stands for Promoting Achievment through Technology Instruction for all Students. Their goal is to provide students with the techonology needed for them to learn and participate to thier full potential. In class we learned what assisitive technology actually is. She defined it as any item or piece of equipment or product used to imporce the functional capabilites of children with disabilities; the key word being any. They can be simple things like a pencil grip or a calculator or more high tech things like voice recognition and word prediction software. We then learned the 4 primary uses of assisitve technology. The first is communication; these tools help students communicate with others. Examples are the board with pictures on it that you can pick the picture and it says the word or phrase. There are also things like M3dynamic display, which allows you to type in a message and then it says it out loud. The second use it Manipulation, which allows the student to do simple tasks and use everyday appliances. To cover this category different students use differnet switchs to do different things. There are many different types of switchs, head, touch, mouth and many other options. The third use is Posistioning and Mobility. This is often not covered by PATINS, becuase physical therapist deal with this. It has to do with wheel chairs and other mobility stystems. The fourth use is Learning, and things like adaptive computer access. There are things like alternative mouses for computers and one handed key boards. ZoomText allows someone to make things larger so that they can read them. There are also things like talking calculators and Operation Frog, which allows you to virtually disect a frog. After learning the 4 uses we watched a few videos of students how utilize assitive technology. For more information on PATINS you can go to , www://PatinsProject.com/in.htm