Education Students Visit Assistive Technology Center
Four students and one professor toured the facility and learned about environmental changes they can implement in the classroom to help students learn with improved participation and outcomes. Students also interacted with high and low technology educational items.
On Sept. 17, 2018, Buena Vista University students from the Student Chapter of Council for Exceptional Children (SCEC) organization traveled to the University of Iowa to interact and learn about the Iowa Center for Assistive Technology Education and Research (ICATER).
Four BVU education students and Erica Boettcher, BVU instructor of special education, enjoyed hours of learning about assistive technology which can help learners with reading, writing, organization, note-taking, math challenges, and resourcing skills. Learning about this assistive technology can be helpful for students with multiple needs (such as dyslexia) and increase their learning and engagement in the classroom.
"Through this experience, I’ve learned and feel ready to use a variety of low- and high-tech ways to increase access to my classroom and enhance learning through tools I didn’t even know existed before this."
Victoria Hodge
While at ICATER, the students toured the facility and learned about environmental changes they can implement in the classroom to help students learn with improved participation and outcomes. These changes included the use of smart tables; careful consideration of the locations of outlets; accessible elevating tables; sensory chairs that wobble, roll, or allow for other types of movement; and the overall design of seating areas. Students also interacted with high and low technology items such as, trigger switches, smart pens, fidgets, erasable highlighters, chewelry, cubelets, Osmos, sticky notes, and more.
Patti Bahr, director of ICATER, shared a variety of strategies and materials that BVU’s “preservice teachers” can use in the classroom during their field experience hours, observations, and student teaching. In addition, students had the chance to maneuver the Double Robotics Robot which attends classes for students who cannot make it into the classroom for multiple reasons. The robot allows students to zoom into the classroom from a different location through their computers without missing any learning opportunities.
Boettcher says, “They feel hopeful and are excited about their readiness to tackle the needs of all learners with recognized and unrecognized disabilities.” Victoria Hodge, an elementary education major from Valencia, California says, “Everyone should have access to learning in multiple ways. Through this experience, I’ve learned and feel ready to use a variety of low- and high-tech ways to increase access to my classroom and enhance learning through tools I didn’t even know existed before this.”
