Blog 3: Digital Tools for Adaptive Technology
As librarians and future librarians, our roles and duties are varied and seemingly endless. However, this challenge is an exciting one, and why many of are eager to enter and stay in this field. One area that we must champion in our schools is not only Universal Design in our library space itself, but to help provide resources, or possibly even provide education and training on Adaptive Technologies for students that we serve in our building. "As educators, we must often find creative, alternative means of satisfying established standards and criteria for student learning, and of making them achievable for our diverse learners" (Copeland 2011). These adaptive technologies may not necessarily be designed with students with differently abled students in mind, however they can be used and adjusted and work will all of our student population.
One such program that could be highlighted for staff is called Edji. This is a great program as it would work for students in a variety of age levels (Elementary through High School) and could work for any content area.
https://edji.it/#/home
This is a free software program that allows for annotations of a text. The teacher is the only one who needs to sign up for an account. This is a great feature, as many districts will prohibit use of any program where students are required a login. Students can access the program by simply going to a website (similar to some online quiz games). Every student will need a device to use the program, so teachers will need to either be in a computer lab, check out laptops, etc.
The teacher preps for the lesson by putting the text selection into their account. They can also add in images which is a nice feature. They can make their text selection public, which would allow other teachers to see the text selection, but no their student's comments.
When students annotate the passage they can use text, voice-to-text, and emojis. There are various settings and views on the educator's end of what to allow the students to see (just their own comments or all of their classmate's for collaboration).
The website has some detailed videos to help teachers learn the program.
This would be a great tool for adaptive technology for several reasons. First, it allows students to respond via voice. For students who have difficulty with writing processing, they can speak their comments, and feel like they won't be "behind" or "slow" in a class discussion with their peers, or worry that their peers would see any errors in their writing/spelling. In addition, the use of emojis allows students to think symbolically, and show higher level thinking, without getting bogged down in the complexities of language, when some students have processing issues there.
References
Copeland, C. A. (2011). School librarians of the 21st century. Knowledge Quest, 39(3), 64-69.
One such program that could be highlighted for staff is called Edji. This is a great program as it would work for students in a variety of age levels (Elementary through High School) and could work for any content area.
https://edji.it/#/home
This is a free software program that allows for annotations of a text. The teacher is the only one who needs to sign up for an account. This is a great feature, as many districts will prohibit use of any program where students are required a login. Students can access the program by simply going to a website (similar to some online quiz games). Every student will need a device to use the program, so teachers will need to either be in a computer lab, check out laptops, etc.
The teacher preps for the lesson by putting the text selection into their account. They can also add in images which is a nice feature. They can make their text selection public, which would allow other teachers to see the text selection, but no their student's comments.
When students annotate the passage they can use text, voice-to-text, and emojis. There are various settings and views on the educator's end of what to allow the students to see (just their own comments or all of their classmate's for collaboration).
The website has some detailed videos to help teachers learn the program.
This would be a great tool for adaptive technology for several reasons. First, it allows students to respond via voice. For students who have difficulty with writing processing, they can speak their comments, and feel like they won't be "behind" or "slow" in a class discussion with their peers, or worry that their peers would see any errors in their writing/spelling. In addition, the use of emojis allows students to think symbolically, and show higher level thinking, without getting bogged down in the complexities of language, when some students have processing issues there.
References
Copeland, C. A. (2011). School librarians of the 21st century. Knowledge Quest, 39(3), 64-69.
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