Week 2: Assistive Technology

Hi everyone! Happy October, I hope you all had an amazing week! This week, we read resources about all of the different types of assistive technology. I find it absolutely amazing how many different websites and platforms are so accommodating to so many different types of people! One of the resources that I found to be particularly interesting is that you can translate is Google Sheets. This is a great idea because, not only does it allow students who have English as a second language to learn translations, but it also teaches them a new and creative way to use technology as a resource. I think it is incredibly helpful that this resource doesn’t just explain how to go about using Google Sheets as a translator, but also includes a demonstration. It is extremely user friendly! Another one of our resources that I found to be very useful is the different extensions available on Google Chrome that may be useful for people with special needs. This resource includes a list and descriptions of over thirty different extensions that can accommodate people of all different needs. While reading this list, I was so pleasantly surprised because they created extensions to help with issues that I would have never even thought of. For example, there is an awesome extension called “Visor”. Visor darkens certain parts of the computer screen and brightens the part you are reading, in order to allow the student to focus on one part of the text at a time and not get distracted by other aspects of the text. Another extension that I would have never even considered is called “CraftyZoom”. CraftyZoom provides the user a magnifying glass that you can drag across the screen to enlarge the text as you read, this is intended for people who may have difficulty seeing smaller texts. This is much easier than enlarging the size of the whole text at once because you can move at your own pace, while not messing with the entire text as a whole. I am so thankful to have found these phenomenal tools and can’t wait to use them in the near future!

Have a great week everybody!!