tech class ch 10

Chapter 10 focuses on additional forms of technologies that can help teachers come up with alternative ways of teaching for students who need or are accustomed to a different way of learning.  For example, certain students might be accustomed to lecture work while other students might be accustomed to hands-on learning.  Furthermore, there are technologies that can help students with special needs such as assistive learning devices.  These technologies help to promote differentiated instruction as well as the universal design for learning.  These include a large range of different activities of teaching the curriculum in a way that can suffice the specific needs of students.

The classroom organization tools on pages 282-283, was very helpful in portraying the idea of what technology tools are considered low, mid, or high tech in terms of the ways that they are used.  This allowed my to realized that even the smallest or simplest tasks can be incorporated and used as "high tech" depending on HOW the teachers deliver the lesson.

In addition, I have a big interest in assistive learning technologies.  Having been a speech-language pathologist major during my undergraduate years, I am informed of the high need for assistive learning technologies for the communicative impaired.  Students with disabilities may have limitations on their learning when compared to mainstream students.  With the help of assitive learning devices, the learning gap between these students can decrease.  Some examples of assistive technologies that were discussed in the chapter are handheld dictionaries, advanced calculators.  Furthermore, for those students who have communicative impairments, there are speech recognition software as well as text reading software that the teacher can use in order to help with the learning process.