It is a personal goal of mine to gain more comfort and confidence with technological equipment so as to help each of my students utilize assistive technology. Through the process I am looking at assistive technology with a much broader lens. As a result my objective is being met. Serendipitously, I have had a lot of fun.
In fact, I have come to realize that I have been taking advantage of assistive technology throughout my entire life. Perhaps I can now justify my extravagance when I purchased my KitchenAid appliances - my hands do not hurt after I prepare meals and desserts anymore. I can hold my head up high whenever I get my stepping stool to reach my shoes on the top shelf in my closet, wear my reading glasses to read the newspaper, use my orthotics to avoid foot pain and place my lanyard around my neck to keep my keys close at hand. No wonder I really enjoyed learning about the various ideas fellow students came up with for using dollar store items as assistive technology items for their students. I have already implemented ideas that I received from the presentation during our last EDUC 5173 class. Thank you to everyone for inspiring me to approach assistive technology in a much better way.
Throughout this winter I have had the opportunity to learn through different types of webinars. As you already know, I am going to San Francisco to participate in the ASCD annual conference. As a means of offsetting the high conference fee, I forwarded my name as a volunteer at two sessions. On the night of March 10, the ASCD conference volunteer coordinator trained us through a Webinar. It was exciting to join the approximately 50 other people throughout the world who participated. I have come to appreciate that this method of instruction is a good fit for me and my preference towards visual learning. (Learning in the comfort of my own home is a beautiful bonus!). I must say that I liked the Eluminate system that Barb used in earlier this semester better since I could see her and also download documents easily. (It was more difficult to make a personal connection with the ASCD presenter) Without a doubt, I would love to have further opportunities to use Eluminate again.
Thank you for reading my blog.
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