Final Course Evaluation - Reflective Post #14

What aspects of this course did you find most beneficial?

The aspects of the course I found to be the most beneficial were the topics where I had some familiarity (copyright, equity, accessibility) and was able to learn more about the topic.

What aspects of this course did you find did not meet your needs? Please make suggestions regarding how your needs might be met.

I use, and recommend, a variety of technology for educational use in my current role as an Academic Technology Specialist. I would have enjoyed reading more case studies and diving deeper into the tools where we only managed to lightly scratch the surface. I know the structure of the course was fast-paced and didn't allow for that sort of engagement to take place. I think if a few topics were chose at the beginning of the semester--either by the instructor or the class--more time could have been devoted to understanding the technology and learning more from the other students in the class. Though I understand this may create more work for instructors if certain topics are chosen from a pool of topics.

What topics in this course were most interesting to you?

The topics I found most interesting where the items I have taken for granted. Reading through some of the articles made me thankful for the opportunities I've been given and the blessings I've received.

What topics in this course were least helpful/interesting?

Overall I think the topics were fine, however the amount of reading required didn't allow for much time spent on activities to connect to the readings. The amount of theory presented in the majority of the readings lost my attention. I would have liked to have spent more time on how to use a technology or at least read more case studies how the technology was/is used in an educational environment.

How did your knowledge of issues in educational technology evolve over the semester? Did you have any "Aha" moments?

My knowledge of technological equity definitely evolved over the course of this class as it seemed to be the theme I kept coming back to in my weekly reading summaries. While I didn't have any particular "ah-ha"moments, I now view disabilities differently. To put it simply, a disability is nothing more than something someone is physically incapable of doing and that's how I feel we should view it. Thankfully we live in an age where there are so many technological advancements where we are able to make some of the limitations less debilitating for others.

Professional Development Activity Site

I've created a Google Site to inform others about the topic of "Genius Hour."

Adaptive and assistive technologies, Part II - Reflective Post #13

This week's reading continues with the topic of adaptive and assistive technologies. The article Emerging Technologies and Their Impact on Disability, written by Paul Wise, discusses the technologies that prevent disabilities and ones that provide therapy to those who do. Wise uses the definition of disability, proposed by Neal Halfon, in the article which is described as, "an environmentally contextualized health-related limitation in a child’s existing or emergent capacity to perform developmentally appropriate activities and participate, as desired, in society."

In the introduction Wise uses technological advancements to make the reader question their perceived ideas of a disability. Wise states that, "a changing technological environment can dramatically alter the functional impact of any given disability." He then describes how the invention of the telephone enhanced society's ability to communicate. However, since it was a hearing related activity it made deafness a more debilitating disability. Wise also uses these examples of technology overcoming human limits:

"Automobiles address human inability to move quickly over long distances; telephones address their inability to communicate with their voice over long distances; typewriters and their successors compensate for poor and slow penmanship."

Wise then discusses the difference between, and examples of preventive and therapeutic technologies. Preventive technologies are developed to reduce opportunities for serious injuries to occur that could be disabling or fatal.

Preventive technologies are technical improvements. Wise describes these improvements could be, "in the physical environment of children, including housing, automobile travel, pedestrian and water safety, medication and poison packaging, and playground design." Some of these preventions are mandated by law. An example that was used in the article is a child car seat. Children must meet age, height and weight requirements however a lot of the risk and responsibility lies on the parents or guardians of the child. Parents must have the financial access to purchase a car seat and enforce the use of the car seat and/or window locks to ensure the child's safety.

Therapeutic technologies are more along the lines of assistive technology. Examples mentioned by Wise are eyeglasses, hearing aids, mobility aids, and prescription medication. These technologies, as Wise describes, "can improve daily functioning primarily through enhancing activity levels and participation in normal activities." As with preventive technology, individuals who could benefit from therapeutic devices must have access to financial resources--medical insurance, Medicare, Medicaid, etc.--to acquire necessary equipment. Wise also adds that the adoption phase also comes into play. As with most technology, adoption is a large part of the lifecycle of therapeutic devices. Early adopters are likely to invest larger amounts of resources to be the first to acquire the technology but run the risk of limitations/issues with first generation technology. Majority adopters are more likely to invest once bugs have been worked out of the system and/or prices begin to level while laggards invest once the technology has been proven successful, prices drop on these devices or the technology/method may even become outdated.

Questions to consider

1. Wise notes that, "all technology attempts to address some deficiency in human capacity or in the human condition." How does this idea affect your perception of disability as well as your own abilities, if at all?
   
   When I think of disabilities in this sense, it makes me rethink my perception of what a disability is and the various limitations I encounter. I now see that stereotypes begin to fade and notice that all human beings have some sort of limitation however some limitations are more debilitating.
   
2. Wise describes a debate between technical innovation and the social determinants of health.
   
   "For those who elevate social causation as a focus for public response, the utility of a health indicator like the child mortality rate lies in its capacity to reflect the human impact of larger societal forces. In this sense, child mortality acts as a kind of social mirror, serving as a stark, ultimate expression of deep, often complex social influences. For those who embrace clinical or technical strategies, on the other hand, the very purpose of technical intervention in a setting of material deprivation is to uncouple poverty from its implications for health. Here, the intent is to use technical capacity not to alleviate poverty but to reduce or eliminate its power to alter health outcomes. In this manner, the goal of technical intervention is to eradicate child mortality’s linkage to social causation; the ultimate goal is to create equity in child mortality regardless of the scale of persistent social stratification."
   
   What side of the debate do you find yourself on after reading this article?
   
   I find myself siding with social causation because it returns to the idea of technological equity. Those without the financial means to invest in these technologies are the ones who may suffer the most.
   
   Do you think social causes (like poverty) or technical causes (like lack of proper sanitation) are more at fault for preventable disabilities?
   
   I believe these topics go hand in hand. To use the provided examples, if someone lives in poverty they are unlikely to have the resources to afford proper sanitation. Ultimately poverty becomes at fault due to lack of financial resources.
   
   What, as educators, should we be focusing on to help our students with disabilities?
   
   Students with disabilities may require assistance. As educators, we must strive to help those with disabilities overcome their physical limitations. If students fall behind, or don't receive the assistance they need, we may be putting them at a greater disadvantage in the future. Unfortunately there is a connection between poverty and lack of education. If students continue down a path leading them away from acquiring knowledge or skills, poverty becomes a serious risk.
   
3. In the conclusion, Wise uses the phrase, "transforming human capability and disability" with regard to technology. Using evidence from this article and your own teaching/personal experience, explore if and/or how technology does this.
   
   In my personal experience, technology does transform human capabilities which we could label as disabilities. Society would be less efficient or at least function at a much slower pace without the advancements in technology we take for granted. As Wise pointed out, "virtually all technologies attempt to address some deficiency in human capacity or in the human condition." Vehicles allow us to travel distances in a matter of hours where it would take days to complete and (tele/cell/smart)phones allow us to quickly communicate regardless of distance. Today's smartphones even allow the blind to communicate, Stevie Wonder can text thanks to his iPhone. Technology changes the world we live in and empowers those who taken advantage of its capabilities.

Assistive Technology in the Workplace - Activity #13

At The University of Findlay the Office of Disability Services assist individuals with disabilities and special needs. This office is primarily concerned with meeting the needs of students during the course of their college career at the university. When students step foot onto campus, they can bring their concerns to this office to address their specific needs. These requests can range from special desks (to accompany wheelchairs) to screen readers and audio books to note taking services and scribes. Each student has unique needs and over the years many solutions have been adopted. Technology that is currently available from UF's Office of Disability Services:

• Read Please - Screen Reader
• JAWS for Windows - Screen Reader
• Learning Ally - Audio Books
• Carbon Notebooks - notebooks used to make actual carbon copies
• Live Scribe - Electronic note taking and voice recorder
• Digital Audio Recorders
• Dragon Dictation - Voice to text software
• Kurzweil 3000 - Optical Character Recognition (OCR)/Read aloud software
• ZoomText - Low visibility software
• Cirque Track Pads - Alternative to computer mouse and/or laptop track pad
• Kensington Track Balls - Alternative to computer mouse and/or laptop track pad

When discussing the services offered with the Director of the Office of Disability Services (ODS), the main theme was individualized attention for each student with special needs was the priority. The ODS recognizes that the needs of each student is unique, software and technology is often purchased on an as needed basis as updating technology becomes an unnecessary expense when it isn't utilized. The director also stated that technology is becoming less of a concern for the ODS because of BYOD. Students are now more likely to bring the technology that works best for them and the ODS provides the level of support students request.

Assistive Technology: WebAnywhere - Activity #12

For the this week's activity, we were introduced to the open-source screen reader WebAnywhere developed by the University of Washington. WebAnywhere is a web-tool designed to assist individuals with reading website content.

The service itself is fairly easy to use but is limited to online content. WebAnywhere was designed to be, as the university describes, a web-based screen reader that, "requires no special software to be installed on the client machine [to] enable blind people access to the web from any computer." Since the technology is web-based, it will run on any computer operating system that supports a web browser. Users simply type, or copy and paste, a website address (URL) and the site then loads within the WebAnywhere service.

I was pretty impressed with my experience. WebAnywhere worked very well despite it's simplicity. The service performs well on professionally built websites where accessibility is a concern. However, with that said, it performs best on simpler sites that are highly organized. I visited my blog and I noticed some formatting issues appeared which disrupted the screen reader. Grammatical content such as ellipses [...] and symbols such as the number sign/pound symbol [#] affected the way content was read which ultimately affects the experience some individuals could have while visiting a website.

I was also impressed upon my reflection that people actually use this technology and are using it efficiently. I know this service is used and a blessing to those who are visually impaired, but I personally found it hard to understand. I'm sure visually impaired individuals have heightened hearing skills and I imagine my difficulties relied on my ability to read versus my ability to listen, which is something I have obviously taken for granted. I did find it easier to decipher if I closed my eyes and wore headphones to focus on hearing the produced audio.

Adaptive and assistive technologies - Reflective Post #12

Assistive Technology

The knowledge base article on the University of Washington's website provides an overview of adaptive technology. The article defines adaptive (or, assistive) technology as, "hardware and software can facilitate computer access for people with disabilities," and was written with their students with disabilities in mind. The university wants to address the two major issues, "access to the computers...and access to electronic resources." In this case, electronic resources are anything that can be accessed on a computer such as websites through web browsers and computer applications. The article breaks down a list of special needs into the following categories; blindness, low vision, learning disabilities, speech and hearing impairments, and mobility impairments. Each section is broken down into three components that the university provides; input, output, and documentation. Input is referred to as a device(s) that an individual would use to interact with a computer. Output is referred to as the device(s) or medium in which the individual would receive information from the computer. Documentation is the instructions for these devices.

Assistive Technology: Tools that Help with Learning

The article on understood.org, discusses the assistive technology that can accommodate students with, "learning and attention issues," however the organization is concerned with finding the right solution for the student. The article defines assistive technology as, "any device, piece of equipment or system that helps a person with a disability work around his challenges so he can learn, communicate or simply function better." And by "any device" the tools can range from simple low-tech tools such as highlighters and organizers to high-tech tools like speech-to-text software.

After a brief introduction of assistive technology, the article gets interesting by introducing things such as the Individualized Education Program (IEP), the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) and Section 504. IEPs work hand-in-hand with IDEA which suggests that a child could receive a free education and that IDEA also states that, "the school district is responsible for choosing and purchasing the technology," and that they, "must train its staff and [the] child to use it." The article states that Section 504 is less clear but encourages schools that accommodations to be made for students with disabilities but also states that, "the school isn’t responsible for recommending, purchasing or training [the] child to use assistive technology."

Summary

Assistive technology plays an important role in society which also lends itself to the reoccurring theme of equitable access from past readings in this course. These technologies allow, or empower, people with a disabilities to use a computer application just as any other person may use them. The application, or website, should be developed in such a way to allow interaction with assistive technology. Schools, or any other organization for that matter, must make efforts to accommodate these individuals because legal action could take place.

My experiences with assistive technology is extremely limited. However, in the trainings I provide when creating content for The University of Findlay's website, I make the effort to point out examples where viewers with disabilities may run into issues. For example, photographs uploaded to webpages should include alt tags for visually impaired viewers.

Technical Support - Activity #11

For the this week's activity, I have created a knowledge base addressing a few of these common problems:

• There is no sound coming out of the speakers on the student computers.
• I can't connect to the network.
• My computer keeps freezing up on me.
• My printer won't print.
• My SMARTboard pens aren't working.

Problem: There is no sound coming out of the speakers on the student computers.

Solutions:

1. Check to see if the speakers are turned on and receiving power. If not, plug in electrical cord and turn on speakers.
2. Check to see if the speaker wire (typically with a green plug) is connected to the correct computer port (typically has a green port connector or has a headphone icon). If not make the connection by plugging in the cable to the appropriate port and ensure the speakers are turned on.
3. Check to see if the sound is muted on the computer. To do so, go to the Start Menu > Control Panel in Windows and make sure the sound output is not muted. On a Mac, go Apple Menu > System Preferences > Sound and make sure the output volume is not muted.
4. Restart computer to see if sound card starts to work properly.
5. Check to see if there are any operating system updates that address this issue and download/install them.

Problem: User cannot connect to the network.

Solutions:

1. Check to see if wireless network is accessible to other computers. If not, contact network administrator.
2. Check to see if the wireless network is selected in the network preferences or in the wireless menu. If not select the appropriate network.
3. Check to see if there is a wireless toggle to turn off/on wireless. Typically there is a physical switch or a shortcut that can be pressed to activate wireless.
4. Restart computer to see if wireless card detects signal.
5. Check to see if there are any operating system updates that address this issue and download/install them.

Problem: Computer keeps freezing.

Solutions:

1. Check to see how many programs are running. Close any unnecessary programs and/or forcefully close programs that aren't responding.
2. Restart computer to refresh RAM storage to make the computer function.
3. Check to see if there are any operating system updates and download/install them.

Problem: Printer doesn't print.

Solutions:

1. Check to see if the printer is turned on and receiving power. If not, plug in electrical cord and turn on printer.
2. Check to see if the printer is connected to the computer. If wired, make sure both ends of the USB cable are plugged into the printer and computer. If wireless, make sure both the computer and printer are on the same wireless network.
3. Restart computer to see if the connection between the computer and printer is detected.
4. Check to see if there is a driver update for the printer and download/install them.
5. Check to see if there are any operating system updates that address this issue and download/install them.

Problem: SmartBoard pens aren't working.

Solutions:

1. Check to see if the SmartBoard is turned on and receiving power. If not, plug in electrical cord and turn on SmartBoard.
2. Check to see if there is an object blocking the sensor where the SmartBoard doesn't recognize the pen being picked up.
3. Check to see if the printer is connected to the computer. If wired, make sure both ends of the USB cable are plugged into the printer and computer. If connected via Bluetooth (wireless connection), make sure the computer's accepting Bluetooth connections and the SmartBoard is connected.
4. Restart computer to see if the connection between the computer and SmartBoard is detected.
5. Check to see if there is a driver or software update for the SmartBoard and download/install them.
6. Check to see if there are any operating system updates that address this issue and download/install them.