Assistive Technology is for Everyone

Every Monday I share a different ed tech quote on our Thompson Classroom social media pages for our staff to consider.  

This week’s Mantra is:

Today marks the first of two divisional professional development days in MVSD. These PD days see all staff, across all positions, coming together to share and learn together (similar to last year, this is occurring virtually via Teams). While there are other PD days through the year, these two are the only ones that reach all staff with a focus on a central theme. This year our morning speaker is Shelley Moore; this is a continuation of the work we started in February of 2020.

While Shelley’s focus is not technology, I obviously wanted to find a quote to mesh both the content of our department with her work. I was so pleased to see this quotation as I use this exact phrase when discussing assistive technology in our division! I strongly believe that assistive technology, like the Microsoft Learning Tools built into our Office 365 suite, should be introduced to ALL users. On paper, I would not personally be identified as someone who “needs” assistive technology, yet I use these features daily:

• closed captioning for recorded and live videos
• text to speech for longer documents and self-editing
• speech to text for mobile dictation when I don’t have easy access to a keyboard or need to be hands free

I always share with staff that these tools should be shared with all students, not just those who they have identified as potential candidates. For a lot of students, these features serve as a novelty for a short period of time but then you may be surprised on who keeps up with their use based on their needs and preferences.

To learn more about assistive technology, check out a previous post from a presentation I gave in 2020 as part of the Parkland Clinicians meeting.