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FCTD Family Information Guide to Assistive Technology & Transition Planning This 50 page guide is aimed at providing families with the information they need to effectively prepare for and participate in periods of transition in their children’s lives. Individuals may order one free copy of the guide. Additional print copies are available for $10.A discount is available for bulk orders. To request one or more print copies, send an e-mail to fctd@aed.org.

“Nobody Is Too ‘Anything’ to Read, Write or Communicate” The late news broadcaster Walter Cronkite catalogued the ills of the world every night for television viewers. But through the cataract of daily despair he always glimpsed a reason to hope, to be joyful about the possibilities of the moment and beyond. For the tens of millions of viewers who watched his coverage of the first lunar landing 40 years ago that enthusiasm reached out from their TV sets, when, at the moment of human touchdown on the surface of the moon, Cronkite shed his cloak of objectivity and exuberantly exclaimed, “Oh, boy!”

Despite the many daily challenges that confront them in their sphere, members of school district assistive technology teams nationwide share Cronkite’s enthusiasm for the vast potential of technology to change the lives of individuals with disabilities. Sure, the struggles AT team members face are daunting: lack of time and money; too many pre-service and in-service teachers without sufficient AT training; funding-strapped districts that are sometimes reluctant to approve teams’ AT recommendations for individual students; the reluctance of some districts to accept AT’s viability, and a continuing belief in a few education quarters that some children with disabilities may never learn to read and write. Fortunately, among district AT team members – speech-language pathologists (SLP’s), occupational therapists (OT’s) and others – the technology flame burns brighter than ever. Their enthusiasm still bubbles. Their thirst for information about the latest technology developments that may aid their district’s children is unquenched. And their conviction that no child is too disabled to read or write remains not only ironclad but often translates into a hard-won happy reality for the children with whom they work.

April 2010 - Epistemic Games: Role-Playing, Technology-Based Games for Real-World Thinking and Learning Computer games delight and distract kids – and occasionally infuriate parents and teachers – but some games actually aim to encourage students to think about their world and their place in it. That latter category encompasses epistemic games. Epistemic what? Epistemic games. Derived from epistemology – the study of knowledge -- epistemic games remain a largely unknown element in the growing gaming universe. But they have already carved out a small niche well worth examining: technology-based games that help young players, including those with disabilities, assume the perspective of a specific group of individuals, including attorneys, doctors and urban planners, among others. The objective of epistemic games is to teach players how to problem-solve like real-world individuals and, in the process, develop creative and innovative ways of thinking.

“We have assistive technology in our classrooms – but no one uses it!” This is a refrain heard often in school districts that have invested in assistive technology that frequently sits dormant while children with disabilities, especially those with learning disabilities, do without. What’s the solution? According to Lorianne Hoenninger, an AT consultant on New York State’s Long Island, home to some of the nation’s largest suburban school districts, the solution is: “Build the AT infrastructure first.”

As inclusion classrooms proliferate nationwide and as schools and families become ever more accepting of, knowledgeable about and proficient in the use of assistive and other technology, familiarity is breeding a new approach but not necessarily sound approach to technology use by all parties, according to one prominent inclusion consultant and teacher, Paula Kluth.

For years orientation and mobility (O&M) researchers have studied the ways in which individuals with blindness and low vision get around, or navigate. Traditionally, says Dr. Lotfi Merabet, the assumption has been that blind people, especially early-blind children, have cognitive difficulties in representing spatial environments. These cognitive difficulties were presumed to result in impaired navigation skills. However, he notes, new research – involving the use of consumer-oriented audio technology, including gaming – is setting tradition on its ear.

August 2010 - Developing Family Stories: Moving the Backstory to the Forefront The child laughs easily. She can paint with brilliant colors. He can recite the statistics for every baseball team in every league for the past decade. She wants to help. He wants to make friends. But those aren’t the things that friends and relatives and teachers seem to notice. Instead, they focus on the delays, the sometimes inappropriate behavior, the extra work needed to deal with Jennifer or Jason’s disabilities, their differences. Pretty soon, Jennifer and Jason are seen as their disabilities. The labels assigned in order to qualify for services become their identity.

A New Approach to Early Intervention: Virtual Home Visits Some bicoastal residents call it “flyover country.” Earlier generations called the huge expanses of America’s West “the Great American Desert.” But for the families of infants and toddlers with disabilities who reside there, often in remote and sometimes harsh circumstances far from the care their children require, it is home. Reaching those families for regular required home visits is often a monumental or downright impossible task for administrators of early intervention programs and their service providers who must drive for hours each way in weather conditions that are often severe and dangerous in an era in which fuel prices promise to remain prohibitively high. Until now, hard choices had to be made. Home visits to families in remote areas had to be postponed or canceled due to weather or cost. For families, their children’s needs went unmet. For federally funded statewide programs charged with seeking out and serving all infants and toddlers needing early intervention services, charters went unfulfilled. Today, however, technology provides the hope that virtual home visits can effectively and efficiently supplement, but not replace, traditional in-person visits.

C-Print®: Technology Research for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Students

Trailblazers in technology sometimes make their mark and then fade away. In the assistive technology field, however, Mike Stinson is one who has worked continuously, through three decades, to help students who are deaf or hard of hearing to reach their educational potential through the use of emerging technology.

Crossing the Technology Bridge -- Where Do We Go as a Field to Help All Learners Succeed?An Interview with Ruth Ziolkowski, President and Chief Operating Officer, Don Johnston, Incorporated

This month the Family Center is pleased to feature the insights of Ruth Ziolkowski, President and CEO of the Don Johnston Company, a leading assistive technology firm that recently celebrated its 30th year in business. Don Johnston, and the company that bears his name, are known for literacy software programs, tools, devices and professional development services aimed at supporting students with cognitive, physical and learning challenges. We asked Ms. Ziolkowski to comment on various aspects of the AT field, including where it is headed in K-12 education.

As an occupational therapy practitioner, researcher, and professor, Dr. James Lenker occupies a rare vantage point in the assistive technology field. His is a perspective that encompasses a wide range of AT-related issues: device adoption and abandonment, assessment, evaluation, consumer and rehab technology and AT research. It’s a panoramic perspective with a view of the horizon in every direction and a lens on changes that are remaking the AT landscape.

They include iPads and iPods, smartphones and laptops. They already cost far less than more specialized technology and their price is dropping still further. But their potential to help change the course of U.S. K-12 education is limitless and their educational impact could soon include nearly every American child, including those with disabilities, according to noted education researcher and author Milton Chen, who calls these increasingly ubiquitous devices, “weapons of mass instruction.”

Like many educators, Dr. Charmaine Lowe’s initial introduction to assistive technology was unexpected, untutored, and unequivocal. It happened a decade ago, Dr. Lowe recalls. “I was in an IEP meeting, which was an encounter for which my undergrad studies had not prepared me. I found myself conducting a rough and dirty search and getting online to get a handle on what I was going to be grappling with because I realized it was my job to be an advocate for this child. I learned fast that my training in special education and assistive technology was woefully inadequate. Fortunately, in that instance, all the parties were willing to learn and to understand, but the truth was we were dancing in the dark. From that point on I decided that the lack of preservice training in AT was something I could remedy as a college professor.” 

“Vive la difference!” is proving to be the appropriate motto for speech-language pathologists (SLPs) and other professionals providing augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) support to children of culturally diverse families.