Saturday, November 21, 2009

Week #11: Hardware Selection

Most of the Jurkowski chapters listed I had already read so I started with the Microsoft decision tree. The description is very straight forward but I found the tree itself to be really complicated. I guess I'm not much of a visual learner.
I had consulted with some of those suggested by Jurkowski, for example, my school Special Education teachers, some Child Study team members, our Media Center Specialists, and the school psychologist. She also suggested including the superintendent and principal as well as possibly a board member.
Our school has approximately 1550 students of which 13.2% are classified with special needs. A great number of this population are afflicted with either ADD or ADHD in varying degrees. Unfortunately, none of the sites to which we were directed listed many assistive technologies for this population.
My hardware suggestions are listed on our DB, and I attached a document detailing my rationale and answers to the questions.
Ironically, as I discussed in the DB posting, our special education department is considering writing a grant this year for the purpose of improving the technology available for our IEP and 504 students. We have begun sharing our findings so, hopefully, I'll have some suggestions for the plan.

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