Week 10 Reflection –Inclusion in Education Supported by Technology

What is Accessibility?

This week’s class focused on accessibility through the use of technology when it comes education.  We started the class by watching the following two videos: What is Accessibility?  – this video was from a student’s perspective which had four people with various different disabilities explaining what accessibility means to them, and the second video, Using Technologies to Support Diverse Learning Needs gave an educator’s perspective on how technology can make learning more accessible for students.

One thing that stood out to me in the second video was a story one of the teachers told about a time when the mom of one of her students came up to her and told her that one day after school her son had come up and had told her that he been able to do one of his written assignments with a pencil because the speech-to-text software he had been using had given him the confidence to try to write his assignment on his own. This story stood out to me because when I’ve volunteered in an elementary school classroom and have had to help students who struggled with reading or writing, it was easier for me to do the reading or writing for them instead of trying to get them to do it themselves even though I thought that having them read or write it themselves would benefit them more. This video showed me that allowing someone or something to do something like this for them can actually benefit them just as equally because it is still teaching the skill and building student confidence which is a key aspect to learning.

Exploring Inclusion in BC Education

SET BC | ARC-BC

After we watched the two videos, Mike taught us about some tools, agencies, and support for technology supported inclusion in education.

The first was SET BC which is a Provincial Outreach Program that was created by the Inclusive Education Branch of the BC Ministry of Education to provide assistive technology services for students living with physical disabilities. The second was ARC-BC (Accessible Resource Centre – British Columbia) which is funded by the BC Ministry of Education and Child Care in response to the growing demand for digitally accessible alternatives to hard-copy (print) learning materials.

I found it reassuring to find out that such organizations exist because even though I want to ensure that all of my learning materials are accessible to all of my students, figuring out a way to do this on my own isn’t easy all while making sure that they align with the BC Curriculum.