Week 9

Assistive and adaptive technology either provide people with assistance when performing a task or help adapt the task or technologies related to the task so that it becomes easier or possible. Students that are unable to type or see can use things such as a joy stick instead of a mouse or braille printers. I have never personally seen any of these technologies in use but I have heard of them before. I think it could be challenging because they have to be so individualized. But I think when fit to the individual student, these are a great tool to have in the classroom.

I think the key principals aim to be accessible to everyone. The learning guidelines aim to answer the "Why? What? How?" of learning. Allowing for flexibility is offering different methods to accomplish the same goal, whether this is reading or listening to an audio book, either way students know the content of a book. Being simple and intuitive allows students to know what is expected of them, I have seen this done constantly in the form of rubrics. All of these principles are put in place to help teachers help students do the best possible.

Edmodo and Google drive are two academic softwares I might use in my future classroom. Both of these really focus on student organization and accessibility. Edmodo similar to teacher websites just allows students to easily view announcements and resources. Google drive is great because it would allow me to share anything with students and keep it automatically saved. These are both also easy to access online. I would like to use these to keep my classroom very well organized.

 My experience with blogging has been fine. Its not my favorite but I can see why teachers like to use it to allow students to reflect on what they've learned. However, similarly to discussions it feels a little like busy work sometimes. I honestly don't think there is much I have learned about blogging that I didn't already know before. I have seen teachers minimize error by allowing students to turn in rough drafts, this can ensure that students are on the right path and can't stray completely away from the original assignment.

I commented on my peers posts in the discussion :)

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