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 Long Island Task Force Routes to RtI Summer Symposium = =

Blogs and Wikis for Assistive and Instructional Technology Resources  

Dr. Sarah McPherson, Ed.D. Chair Instructional Technology, New York Institute of Technology smcphers@nyit.edu Teachers need easy access to information about assistive technology. Blogs and wikis can help. Teachers and others can use these web 2.0 tools to share resources about technology for meeting students’ special needs. At this session find out how you can use blogs and wikis to help children learn. All resources presented will be compiled in a wiki at http://longislandtaskforce2008.wikispaces.com/ Teachers are continually looking for resources to help them better meet the needs of their students, especially those with special needs. Research has proven technology can be used as a tool to enhance the teaching learning process and as a result improve achievement. IDEA requires the consideration of assistive technology for students with special needs. But the greatest barrier is lack of knowledge of the technologies available.

Assistive technology is a broad field with commercial vendors as a primary source of the information available. However, the perspective of educators is more important for how technology works, with whom and under what circumstances. There is much collective knowledge from the field of the technology available, but there are limited ways to share the knowledge beyond our immediate colleagues. One way is to use collaborative Web 2.0 tools such as blogs and wikis.

This presentation will describe ways that teachers have used these tools for researching assistive technology and sharing their findings with others. They shared their ideas for how to use and success stories for what worked well. Perhaps blogs and wikis can be the platform for building “a community of practice” around assistive technology in New York.