Assistive technology can benefit all students. Most of the adaptations or accommodations we provide students not only benefits those it is in place for, but also the class as a whole. This is true for assistive technology as well. My experiences with assistive technology is fairly limited, but my experiences with adapting instruction and providing accommodations is more well versed. I’ve frequently used bluetooth transmitter/FM type systems to communicate with students who wear hearing aids. Combined with the hearing aids were providing accommodations like printed notes, pre-filled in notes, and verbal and written instructions on exams. My use of Google Classroom has been beneficial for all students as it makes it easier for students with ADHD (and pretty much all pre-teens/teenagers) to stay organized. When it comes time to complete a larger project or prepare for a test, students can spend more time studying and less time searching for their work. For students with chronic absenteeism, which currently mostly stems from mental health issues, it is much easier for students to stay engaged and keep up independently with Google Classroom. 

 

Further, our school continues to access Google Read and Write which allows students to manipulate text in a variety of ways based on learning style. Speech to text, text to speech, and picture dictionaries are the most common forms of tools used on that program. As a school with a device per student from K-12, it has allowed us to utilize iPads and Chromebooks at regularly scheduled times. Since every student has a device it has allowed teachers to get into a routine of using a program like Google Read and Write. The benefit has been that students are comfortable using it and it hasn’t been a simple novelty used once. The text to speech is beneficial when you want students to work on something in pairs and to save some time can listen to the text and follow along. Provides more time to work with the knowledge than spending the entire time just trying to read the passage. The same is true for speech to text. In social or science it can be incredibly frustrating for a student to get their thoughts down on a sheet or paper or document when writing or typing. With the ability to do speech to text, students can show what they are learning much faster. I believe our understanding of this technology with improve as we become more comfortable with AI.