K-12 in the News

The article Online Labs Aim to Revolutionize High School Science, by Amanda Morris, emphasizes the importance of technology-rich experiences in today’s high school biology classrooms. The author describes the growing gap between the way high school and college science experiments are conducted, and the possibility of integrating high-tech, internet-based labs into the regular science curriculum. Science requires a high amount of hands-on activities for learning, and many schools and teachers are not able to give students the time, facilities, or equipment to really explore concepts or natural occurrences in detail.

As a new teacher, I am worried that I will not be able to provide my students with all of the wonderful technology I have been able to use in my own learning or in my teacher preparation program. The classrooms I have worked in just as a practicum student have varied greatly in the amount of technology available to students and teachers, including technology for presentations to a group (TVs, projectors, SmartBoards) or individual exploration (computer software, modeling tools, LabQuests). While I was searching for news reports relevant for K-12 schools, I found an article that made me very hopeful.

In the article titled Newer Teachers Get Their Own Store of Goodies, Laura Oleniacz from the Sun Journal describes a scene at a local elementary school in which a classroom was converted into a supply store for new teachers to browse through before the start of school. The store was provided by a grant from a private non-profit organization with the goal of retaining new teachers and helping supply teachers in the face of new budget cuts. The store offers technology tools and supplies that are often expensive for new teachers to buy out-of-pocket or simply unavailable. The supplies included new laptop computers, projectors, digital recorders, and creative classroom materials. Local teachers quoted in the article seemed excited at the opportunity to use a lot of technology in their classrooms – “There’s always a way to use technology to benefit [students’] different learning styles.” It appears like teachers are always willing to accept more technology rather than less.

I am glad there are school districts that recognize the difficulties facing beginning teachers who want to use the technologies they have experience with, but are still unaware of or don’t have access to all the resources available to schools. However, I worry that programs such as this store for teachers within the school are not possible without enormous grants. I almost wish my teacher preparation program at JMU had a course dedicated to fund raising and writing grants, applying for new learning opportunities, and being resourceful in a school or community that is much more limited in funds.

Assistive Technology

The Family Center on Technology and Disability (FCTD) defines high incidence disabilities as the disabilities which affect the greatest number of students (http://www.fctd.info/show/home). According to the National Center for Education Statistics, the highest numbers of students between the ages of 3 and 21 who receive services for disabilities through federally supported programs are enrolled in the following categories: specific learning disabilities, speech or language impairments, intellectual disability, emotional disturbance, other health impairments, and developmental delay (http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/). These categories are very broad. For example, “other health impairment” can include diabetes, ADHD, epilepsy, anemia, a heart condition, or Tourette syndrome. In addition to, there are also a large number of students who experience multiple disabilities.

As a classroom teacher, I will likely encounter many students that experience identified or non-identified high incidence disabilities. Children with high incidence disabilities may need relatively little accommodations or interventions to allow them to access the general curriculum. The Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act of 2004 (IDEA) states that all children should receive a “free and appropriate public education” in a “least restrictive environment”. When considering placement and the IDEA, Individual Education Program (IEP) teams often decide that students with high incidence disabilities are likely to benefit most from instruction in the general or mainstream classroom. However, the IEPs for these students may identify a variety of services and tools that will be required to improve their access to learning. Schools are now required to consider the benefits assistive technologies could bring to children who experience specific disabilities. General classroom teachers have the responsibility to ensure that the needs of the children in their classes are being met in accordance with the IEPs they sign. The principles of Universal Design encourage teachers to also consider how to use differentiation, technologies, and other resources and strategies to accommodate the needs of all learners, not just those with specific disabilities.

The 2004 IDEA defined assistive technologies as “any item, piece of equipment, or product system, whether acquired commercially off the self, modified, or customized, that is used to increase, maintain, or improve functional capabilities of a child with a disability. Assistive technology allows individuals with disabilities to perform tasks and express their understanding when these might otherwise have been difficult or impossible. Assistive technologies may help individuals be more independent by helping overcome obstacles in learning, communication, or access. There is an enormous variety in what is can be considered an assistive technology for learners with disabilities. Assistive technologies can include wheelchairs, computer software, alternative input keyboards, planners, and homemade flashcards. Educational teams within schools are now required to consider assistive technology needs as they are developing student IEPs.
The Family Center on Technology and Disability (FCTD) state that assistive technologies were once predicted to be able to help 35 percent of students with learning disabilities or health impairments (high incidence disabilities), 75 percent of students with autism or TBI, and 100 percent of students with physical or multiple disabilities (low incidence disabilities). Assistive technologies were at the time most commonly thought of in terms of materials which helped learners with physical or severe disabilities because it was easier to see how tools such as wheel chairs, Braille books, and hearing aids replaced the lost or impaired functions of a particular learner Since then, assistive technologies have been developed and adapted from their original function to serve a larger variety of student needs. Computer, software, internet technologies are increasing the variety and availability of assistive technologies available to teachers and parents of students with disabilities. Our conceptions of assistive technologies have also changed in ways that have greatly expanded the use of these technologies in cases of high incidence disability.

However, as research expands and includes students with mild or learning disabilities, there has also been a greater need for communication between all those involved in a students learning regarding the assistive technology being used. It is often more difficult to determine how a particular assistive technology improves an impaired function and how or when a particular assistive technology should be used. In one case study, a college biology student with dyslexia describes how the extended time and a computer program which highlighted and read aloud the words aloud which he required in order to take exams cause concern for his professor. The instructor who was unsure whether the same technologies that allowed the student equal access to the test material would also give the student an unfair advantage over others taking the test without similar accommodations (http://www.washington.edu/doit/Faculty/articles?217).

According to Recesso and Orrill, areas that often present challenges to learners with disabilities include “organization and planning; reading, processing, and understanding language; writing and spelling; and expressing ideas through language.” The GreatSchools website provides articles and information on assistive technologies that are available for students who struggle with math, listening, writing, reading, organization and memorization. In math, assistive technologies that may be commonly used include electronic worksheets, paper-based computer pens which link audio lecture recordings to student notes, and talking calculators. Students who struggle with listening may benefit from personal FM listening systems with transmit sound more directly and variable speed tape recorders. Assistive technologies that now allow students with writing disabilities to express themselves in a written format include, abbreviation expander software, alternative keyboards, graphic organizers and outlines, portable word processors, proofreading software programs, speech recognition software programs speech synthesizers/screen readers, talking spell-checkers and electronic dictionaries, and word prediction software programs. Students with reading disabilities may consider using audio and book publications, optical character recognition which scans and reads print aloud, paper-based computer pens, speech synthesizers or screen readers, and variable tape recorders. Students who struggle with organization and memory may be trained to use free-form database software which records and retrieves notes, information data managers which help when planning, and a paper-based computer pen. (http://www.greatschools.net/articles/?p=1&topics=188&language=EN)

Assistive technologies such as those listed above could cause a significant improvement in learning for students with high incidence disabilities who I will hopefully soon be teaching in a 10th grade biology setting. I wanted to see how available these technologies might be for my students, so I researched the availability of audio recordings for the textbook I am currently using in a high school general biology course. I found a CD with the text available in a read-aloud format. However the recording was not cheap and did not include read aloud versions of the problems, teats, and worksheets. These types of recordings could significantly reduce the stress placed on beginning biology students to read and quickly internalize new terms. Biology is infamous for requiring large amounts of memorization from beginning students. I think the graphic organizers, read-alouds, and note recall devises listed as assistive technologies for students with high incidence disabilities could very well be valuable and appropriate tools to provide to all students in introductory biology courses.

My practicum field experience last spring introduced me to many students with attention deficit hyperactive disorders and students who were identified with emotional disturbance. I was curios and also researched what assistive technologies might assist these students in a high school classroom and found that assistive technologies can vary greatly in complexity as well as function. Low technological support tools for behavior that may improve a student’s learning include multipurpose point sheets, behavior contracts, and behavior charts or graphs. These tools help lower anxiety by having students write down their goals and the teacher’s expectations in an organized chart or point sheets. These goals can also be tied to rewards which help motivate students. “Mid tech” solutions include lights that signal when students can talk and remind students of what is appropriate in different settings, iPods which can keep students calm and focused, or serve as a reward, and pager-like devises which remind students of the tasks and goals they are trying to reach and allow them to work on task with fewer prompts and direction from the teacher. Higher technology approaches included advanced videos, games, and software programs which engage students or allow them to work individually. (http://at4schools.wetpaint.com/page/Technology+Aided+Strategies+for+students+who+are+Emotionally+Disturbed)

Meet the Standards

When I sat down to think about an educational technology I use in everyday life, I kept thinking back to our classroom discussion on the technologies we could not live without and what defines technology. I had said during class that I could not live without some device that allowed me to listen to music. It is often convenient for people to listen to music throughout the day using cd players, ipods, computers, radios, or, in the case of my new roommates, a record player. These sources of music are easy to identify as part of what we generally mean by the term technology. They are made by man, facilitate communication, and make life easier. However, the majority of what I really listen to comes from music played with various instruments fond on the front steps and porches of my friends’ homes. I normally distinguish their guitar, drum, or violin playing from my singing in the shower, but it is a little harder for me to grant these instruments the title of “technological advancements.” I don’t remember what we finally decided on as a class, but the definition I like the most for technology goes something like this: “If science is the way we observe the natural world, then technology is how we alter the natural world to solve human problems. I have yet to hear a person create the sounds a sitar can produce with their voice, so to consider this a technological achievement I imagine that at one point a sitar was created to solve the problem that this particular sound someone imagined could not be found anywhere in the natural world.

Music players are not often found or used in typical classrooms. The few times I can remember listening to music during class, the cd or youtube recording was used to play songs that made an idea or set of terms easier to remember, either through humor or repetition. In my foreign language classes teachers used music players a little more frequently to help students practice listening and decoding skills. Technology that allows us to listen to or play music is not often used to help students actually learn difficult concepts, but I think it could be. In biology students may struggle with systems of classification, principles of evolution, or the collaborative efforts of scientists over time. These can each be explored by students using instruments or music players.

For example, students could participate in an activity in which they would have to classify different musical instruments into categories. Through this activity, students would likely run into the same type of problems scientists encounter when classifying living organisms. Different students or groups of students may use different criteria to classify various instruments based on tone, material, genera, size, or method of producing sound. Students could also use this example to start a discussion on why classification is important in the scientific community. (Why distinguish between wood and brass, base and treble, acoustic and electric instruments?)

In another example, a teacher may use instruments to explain the processes which allow evolution to take place in living systems. Students could explore using different materials how people “develop” instruments. One scenario might look something like this:
A student is given a flat, wooden cylinder with one closed end. When asked to play music the student might turn it over and tap on the closed end or tap on any of the sides. When asked to experiment with it they might cover it with a cloth on one end and make a drum. They may accidently break the sides and cover the holes with small metal disks to make a tambourine. Another might fill the hole with beads and close it with a stick to make a maraca or rain stick. If the beads fall out the student may then try to cover the outside with beads instead to make a shakere. The students probably would not know a lot about all of these percussion instruments and their adjustments would be random. Some would make successful instruments, other would fall apart, and others would change from one form to another. This would help emphasize the importance of random mutation in creating new forms. The drum with a whole in the side can no longer be just a drum, it becomes something else. The experiment would also help students to explain why some “species” (instruments) die out or flourish depending on how well suited they are to filling a particular “niche” (how adapted they are to producing a particular sound).

Students could study the collaborative efforts of scientists by drawing comparisons between the histories of musical instruments or styles of music. In science, observations and discoveries contribute to the development of theories about the way things work in nature. Later experiments help to provide evidence supporting or rejecting those theories. The major scientific theories are almost never developed fully by one person at one time. The cultural environments each person makes a discovery in contributes to the interpretation of the results and how well accepted an idea is. In the same way styles of music, such as salsa or hip hop, may be studied in terms of the musicians, diverse cultures, and experimentations that all came together over a period of time to create what we here today. Many people and cultures often contribute to the development of musical instruments. For example the cello originated from an Italian violin in the 1500s, which originated from some still earlier form of instrument.

These activities are not perfect and would have to be adapted in different classrooms to fit students’ interests and needs, but they represent a different way of looking at music players and instruments in the classroom. Instruments and music players can be tools for learning not just technology for the purpose of communicating the same information over a different medium. I think these types of activities would support the principles outlined by the authors of our textbook, Integrating Technology into Teaching. They require students to be actively engaged in the learning process and help students build on the knowledge they have from their own interests and experiences in order to gain knowledge of new concepts and ideas. Hopefully students would learn that most processes and concepts in biology are based in systems that can be compared to other systems in their daily life. Some of the more common examples are, the atmosphere becoming a greenhouse, the nucleus of a cell becoming a human brain, and the mitochondria of a cell becoming a powerplant. Drawing these comparisons to support their learning is a skill that students can use repeatedly in their science studies.