Learning Made Accessable

The students, not the teacher, rule a classroom. The students who have been dismissed for ages as difficult learners are not at fault for their inability to grasp the concepts presented to them. Whether or not these children have any sort of disability, it is the curriculum that has been disabling productive, active learning in classrooms. With the technology teachers have available to them today, they can adapt their teaching methods to provide for the different learning styles of their diverse group of students.
According to the CAST (Center for Applied Special Technology) website, located at http://www.cast.org/publications/UDLguidelines/version1.html, the organization’s goal is to “create built environments and tools that are useable by as many people as possible.” The classroom is not just a place where the teacher creates the classroom environment and develops a curriculum based around what works best for him or her; in fact, it is a location that must be adaptable and useable for approximately 20 uniquely different learners. A classroom should be accessible to students with physical disabilities, students with mental handicaps, and even children who are gifted and talented. Creating an inclusive environment is much easier with the help of technology like individual headsets, large print readers, and descriptive films. I think going into a computer lab and having everyone put on headphones while looking at a web page on the habitats of the Amazon jungles would be an ideal way of employing assistive technology. The students who just need to concentrate on reading can use the headphones to block out excess noise, while students who need help with pronouncing the new vocabulary can have the website read to them as they listen through headphones.
America has implemented the No Child Left Behind Act in order to get students on the same level. The amendment of the Rehabilitation Act, as described in Section 508, ensures that the technology will be there for students with disabilities who would otherwise be left behind. I fully intend to make this law work for me as a teacher so that I can offer assistive technology in my classroom. I believe that whether or not a child has disabilities, they should have options as to how they are presented with curriculum materials. It is highly unlikely that I will not have someone requiring special needs of some sort in my classroom, and the Federal assistance that would be available to them could be used to help the entire class.
The Maine State Library (MSL) offers a variety of outreach services that allow for people who are blind, or who are reading impaired, to utilize talking book programs, large print books, and descriptive video. These tools allow the student to keep up with and enjoy the same readings as the rest of the class. The descriptive videos supplement the dialogue going on in the film, giving a more in depth description of the actions that can be heard, but not seen. Some descriptive videos even have to do with math, history, and science. Because there are so many different learning styles in one classroom, I see no reason not to use descriptive videos with a class that really has no evident physical challenges. Hearing the narrator spell out the steps of dividing fractions AND hearing the description of the physical placement of each number as it is manipulated would be invaluable to learners who need that audio-visual reinforcement.
While many teachers might see registering for the MSL’s outreach assistance as time consuming and frustrating, the fact is that having this technology to assist their students will make teaching their class far easier in the end. Teachers who work with their students’ disabilities instead of following their own agendas will have to appreciate how well the class is able to flow. Imagine one less student having to leave for a Special Education class because he or she can just follow along with assistive technology? It is possible, and it is the responsibility of today’s teachers to use assistive resources to everyone’s advantage.