Assistive Technology Toolkit

In this post I will be analyzing Kelly Ahrens' article about how to make your own AT toolkit. This article is to help teachers and others in general find useful items on their computer that help or can be used as assistive technology. The best part about these tools is that they are free. The first suggestion she makes is google books for the visually impaired. Others include Bookshare and Project Gutenburg which can be assessed through your school site. Another tool she mentions is a smart art plug in that is accessible through Microsoft Office 2007 and gives teachers a concept map tool. She suggests working with the school IT department to get more tools that schools have to offer as they have specific licensing access or administrative rights that teachers do not have. Lastly she gives a list of tools found on the computers themselves. The tools include magnification, on screen keyboards, personalization, and filter keys. These tools allow students to see typing on screen, add language translation and talking clocks to keep time, finally, ignoring of brief keystrokes to increase typing speed an efficiency.
So what about these new tools is useful? This article is written by a technology director of a school district so it is in her best interest to help educators. This is a good article for teachers to learn from because I did not think to use any of these tools and learned about others. I did not know about speech recognition or that computers have the ability to do this. I would like to know how to use this tool. I agree with all of these tools and their use in the classroom and think that many teachers may not know, or even think to use them during the busy school day. The online concept maps and spell checkers were  also good to know about. I also did not know about using the IT department of a school district in the way she suggests. For example though I knew about the licensing, I did not know about disk imaging. Disk imaging is the ability to install multiple forms of software at once rather than one item at a time. This could save teachers lots of time.
As good as the article is there is more to be explained. While she gives a list of all of the tools at the end of the article, she does not tell us how to use them, it is up to the teacher to play with them and figure them out. She also does not tell us where to find these tools on the computer or where we can get help within the computer. This being said some of the tools are known and the average user can figure them out, but not all of them. You can also use the internet to find out how and where these items are on the computer it just takes time.

Ahrens, K. (November, 2011). Build an assistive technology toolkit. Learning and Leading With Technology. Retrieved fromhttp://www.iste.org/store/my-virtual-products

Passport to Digital Citizenship

In this post I will be analyzing Mike Ribble's article Passport to digital Citizenship. It is an article that suggests a method to teach the concept of digital citizenship in the classroom, using a four stage system.  His idea of digital citizenship includes nine categories that cover everything from accessing material; literacy; health; security and others. The first stage of the four stage system is to make the student's aware of these nine categories or elements. The second stage is to deliver guided practice on these categories. The third stage is to model and demonstrate them to give examples of how to use the elements. Finally to give the students feedback on how they executed the elements of digital citizenship.
So what about this model and the elements of citizenship? This model of teaching has been in use for years and is a good strategy for almost any topic that you are trying to teach. Execution of this model depends on the teacher and how well they can use differentiated instruction. One of the best ways for students to practice the elements of citizenship that Ribble is providing is to practice it themselves. There are many assignments that a teacher can assign and offer feedback as in any english class. The concept of digital citizenship is so large that it would be hard to make nine assignments to practice each element. you would have to grade multiple categories at once which will not be too hard.
While I agree with Ribble's plan there are some things that could be explained more in the article. His nine elements are vague in this article although it is also serving as advertisement for his book that cover these nine elements in detail. He also leaves it up to the teacher to use the four stage strategy without any real suggestions on how to execute it. He is giving teachers a model and leaving it up to teachers as to how to use it. I would like to know any other suggestions he has to make his four stage system work.

Ribble, M. (December-Janurary, 2008-09). Passport to digital citizenship: Journey toward appropriate technology use at school and at home. Learning and Leading With Technology. Retrieved fromhttp://www.iste.org/store/my-virtual-products.