Keywords: Technology, Learners with Special Needs

About the project

As a result of disruptions in face-to-face instruction caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, special needs students lost much needed instruction in literacy, as virtual learning did not seem to be as effective and engaging. How can technology be used to assist the learner with special needs?

Progress

The team as explored variety of online tools available to support student learning such as Google Read and Write, Microsoft Reader. Youth who were given increased access to digital tools liked using them and teacher perceived some tools helped students.

The team highlighted insights from their work, including that not all students had parental permission to use devices, citing concerns about screen time and unsupervised web access. Although they found the use of technology tools useful in their initial prototype, the team wanted to continue work to determine how many more tools were accessible to their students.

The follow-up intention was to work to match the capabilities of different tools to objectives for instruction and to different student needs for the upcoming instructional period.