Friday, April 4, 2008

SpeEd Change: Blog of Note

Another terrific Blogger!

I started an Assistive Technology Blog Carnival last month and we had our first issue out the end of March. Requests for submissions going in the second issue have started and I had an assistive technology specialist from Michigan share some quality submissions.
Ira David Socol has the SpEd Change Blog and he is an author as well. His book, "The Drool Room" is a novel about a profoundly dyslexic boy who grows to a man. You can check it out at Amazon .com.
I don't want to give away too much since he will be sharing in our April AT Blog Carnival, but he has a post right now on equipping special needs students with a toolbelt of tools that can be used for various tasks when they leave school and are out in the bigger world. His post causes us to analyze how we implement AT and whether we enable students to be independent or hold them back and keep them dependent.
I especially thought hard about the way we provide technology and the assumptions we make in how we provide it. He asked if your school has all the AT software that is available for free on all computers, accessible to all students to use. Good point. I guess I am guilty of putting those items on computers only if there are students that need them - in a prescriptive way.
I would encourage you to take a look at this blog and if you are in education or work with special needs folks, take a second look at some of the details to how you decide to implement.
I am delighted to include this blog on my sidebar.

All the best to you!

Lon

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