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Your weekly dose of information that keeps you up to date on the latest developments in the field of technology designed to assist people with disabilities and special needs.
Special Episode:
We replay parts 1, 2 and 3 of iPad High School from a time when iPads were starting to be widely used in a Central Indiana High school
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WADE WINGLER: Hi, this is Wade Wingler with the INDATA Project at Easter Seals crossroads in Indiana with your Assistance Technology Update, a weekly dose of information that keeps you up-to-date on the latest developments in the field of technology designed to assist people with disabilities and special needs.
Welcome to episode number 291 of assistive technology update. It’s scheduled to be released on December 23, 2016.
Before we get started with the show here today, I just need to jump in and let you know we are doing something different. The shows are being released in December 2016 when we are sort of taking some time off for the holidays and resting and relaxing a little bit. I decided, instead of doing new shows during this period of time, we were going to go back to one of our favorite series that was done about five years ago called iPad high school. This was early in the days of assistive technology update. We visited Danville, Indiana high school which was one of the local school where my daughter at the time was going to high school. They decided to go digital. They were one of the first schools in Indiana to go totally paperless and do iPads for everything.
For three weeks in a row, we’re going to do iPad high school part one, part two which was originally recorded in 2011, and then we are going to do iPad high school follow-up which was recorded a year later to see how the implementation went. I hope you enjoy this nostalgic look back at how the iPad impacted this central Indiana high school, my family, my daughter, my grandparents and walk down memory lane with us.
After the first of the year, we will be back with our regular format of news and interviews and all those other kinds of things. In the meantime, I would love to do sort of an iPad impact episode sometime early in 2017. Here is what I need you to do. I need you to call our listener line and let us know how the iPad has impacted your assistive technology life and last five years. You can do that by calling our listener line at 317-721-7124, and let us know how the iPad has been a big deal or not with you and assistive technology. If we get enough of those comments together, we will put together a whole episode as a follow up on this iPad high school we visited.
Without further delay, here we go walking down memory lane and our episodes of iPad high school.
***
KATIE: Hi, I’m Katie, and this is my iPad, and this is your Assistance Technology Update.
WADE WINGLER: Hi, this is Wade Wingler with the INDATA Project at Easter Seals crossroads in Indiana with your Assistive Technology Update, a weekly dose of information that keeps you up-to-date on the latest developments in the field of technology designed to assist people with disabilities and special needs.
Welcome to part two of iPad high school. And normally assistive technology update spends half an hour each week doing news, questions, and answers, and interviews with thought leaders in the field of assistive technology. But for the last week and this week we decided to break from our format and bring you a program called iPad high school. I recently learned that my daughter’s school here in Danville, Indiana, is replacing their textbooks with iPads. We are spending about an hour taking a look at what that really means for students in general but more specifically for students with special needs. Last week we spent a lot of time talking to my daughter Katie as well as a lot of the folks at the school system who were responsible for paying for, rolling out, and thinking about all of the things that might go wrong when it comes iPads for high school students.
This week we are going to spend a little time talking to my grandfather about what he thinks about Katie having an iPad and what he likes a digital textbook, as well as the special ed director to talk about the assistive technology implications, and a friend of ours, Vicki Hirschman, over at PATINS, which is an organization here in Indiana that does all kinds of the K-12 assistive technology. She brings up some possible unintended consequences with rolling on iPads in this sort of setting.
Last time we left we were talking about social media and how the school is protecting students from getting into things they should be with the iPad. Now we are going to spend time with my daughter Katie talking about how she is learning to use this tool in the classroom as a real academic tool.
***
KATIE: In the class organizer you can record your class. You can record your session. Like on Friday I recorded my physics teacher.
[Recorded Voice]
KATIE: So that’s why we use air track in physics class.
WADE WINGLER: You can record the actual lecture?
KATIE: Yeah.
WADE WINGLER: And take notes at the same time if you want to type up notes?
KATIE: Right. You can type, and you can also pull up this drawing pad for math or something and don’t want to type your math, you can write it out with your finger. You also have good reader which is where I get my homework assignments off of.
WADE WINGLER: Those look like PDF icons to me, so those are PDF files?
KATIE: Mhm.
WADE WINGLER: Do you have homework due tomorrow in math?
KATIE: Yes.
WADE WINGLER: Can I see it?
KATIE: The answers aren’t on here. This is just a question worksheet. I put the answers on different paper.
WADE WINGLER: What I see here is a math worksheet. It’s algebra. How do you turn this stuff in? How does it go from this thing showing up on your screen to you doing her homework?
KATIE: I put it mostly on paper.
WADE WINGLER: So you copy it from the iPad down to the paper?
KATIE: Yeah, but you can also print from your iPad, you can send it to the printer.
WADE WINGLER: Have you done that before?
KATIE: Yeah. I did that with my physics homework.
WADE WINGLER: Because our printer here at home will talk to your iPad. But then you have to turn in paper?
KATIE: Yeah.
WADE WINGLER: Does that seem funny to you?
KATIE: I think for now we are doing that because not everyone has theirs yet. I don’t know if you’re going to do something different once everyone gets theirs or not.
***
WADE WINGLER: so as Katie is getting used to managing the academic and the social aspects of her iPad, it becomes her constant companion. When we recently visited my grandparents cash spent time showing them with the iPad was in getting their opinions on what that means for education today.
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WADE WINGLER: Tell me your name.
GIB BRIAN: Gib Brian.
WADE WINGLER: When did you graduate high school?
GIB BRIAN: 1945.
WADE WINGLER: You just had a chance to look at the new iPad project that they are doing at Danville. What do you think about that?
GIB BRIAN: I think it’s great.
WADE WINGLER: Tell me why.
GIB BRIAN: It’s fascinating. It’s probably –
MARY BRYANT: Good challenge.
GIB BRIAN: It’s probably going to make them a little bit smarter than I was. With that type of equipment, there is no reason for them not to get their lessons.
WADE WINGLER: How is that different than the study used back in the 40s?
GIB BRIAN: I used a pen and pencil and that was it. No computers, no calculators.
MARY BRYANT: You had paper.
GIB BRIAN: No air conditioning in the schools. No cafeterias.
WADE WINGLER: You think it’s going to make the kids any smarter or better at learning?
GIB BRIAN: I believe it should.
MARY BRYANT: It’s also up to the child and how much they want to know.
WADE WINGLER: Let me ask you the same questions. What’s her name?
MARY BRYANT: Jake.
WADE WINGLER: Give me your whole name. I’m recording this.
MARY BRYANT: Mary Bryant.
WADE WINGLER: What year did you graduate high school? You did graduate?
MARY BRYANT: I sure did. I got a diploma someplace.
WADE WINGLER: Do you remember what year?
MARY BRYANT: 1948?
GIB BRIAN: We were married in ’48.
MARY BRYANT: ’46 or ’47.
WADE WINGLER: They go. And how is this new computerized textbook different than what you used?
MARY BRYANT: I don’t know. I don’t know it that well. I’ve never used one myself.
WADE WINGLER: Katie, show her about it.
KATIE: You’ve got folders for your apps, language, math, social studies.
MARY BRYANT: Fascinating.
KATIE: It shows you a model of the molecule. There is DNA, insulin, caffeine. You can move it around, zoom in.
MARY BRYANT: I’ll be darned.
KATIE: You can do your homework. You can type stuff out and save it. There’s also the class organizer where you can write notes for a specific class and save them in here.
MARY BRYANT: Can you get somebody else’s in the room that’s got one of these?
KATIE: I can message anyone in my school over email.
MARY BRYANT: If they have one?
KATIE: Right. I recorded my teacher.
MARY BRYANT: You all have one?
KATIE: They are working on getting everyone. Almost anyone has one.
MARY BRYANT: Do you have to do something to earn it? They just give them to you whether you want them or not?
KATIE: Yeah.
MARY BRYANT: Saves a lot of paper.
KATIE: It does.
MARY BRYANT: And pencils. It’s hard on fingernails.
***
WADE WINGLER: Although an iPad in itself has a lot of inherent accessibility characteristics, the fact that a child doesn’t have to turn pages or handle a pencil or there are built-in features like voice over and zoom to make things bigger, and you can flip the colors around and all those kinds of things, we wanted to spend some time talking specifically to Dr. Glenda Pate who it is the director of special education for Danville school systems, to talk about what this iPad project means for kids in the special ed program. Here is a little bit of information about apps and built-in accessibility and what’s going on in terms of special education and iPad high school.
***
WADE WINGLER: Today I am with Dr. Glenda Pate who is the director of special education for Danville community schools. We are continuing our conversation about the iPad that’s being implemented here. Dr. Pate, how are you today?
DR. GLENDA PATE: I’m fine.
WADE WINGLER: Good. Thank you so much for taking time out of your busy schedule. I know you’ve got a lot of things going on including iPad crises today and upgrades and those kinds of things, which may or may not – you can tell me – be part of doing business for you these days.
DR. GLENDA PATE: This one of those days where I had my iPad worked on and all crashed, so I’m reloading and getting everything back to it.
WADE WINGLER: Hopefully that’s a temporary and minor thing for you. One of the first things I wanted to talk about is, Danville is rolling out iPads for all of the high school students and has done so. It’s been a rollout process and I know it has lasted several weeks and was recently completed. Does the roll out iPads to all students include special ed students as well?
DR. GLENDA PATE: It does. By all, we mean all.
WADE WINGLER: So talk to me a little bit about that.
DR. GLENDA PATE: Basically there are two different packets that the students will get on their iPads. There is the general education file that has all the apps. The majority of students will get that. Then we have a different file that is for the life skills students. We are looking at a lot of different things that are more geared towards them with the accommodations, hands-on, more at their skill level.
WADE WINGLER: Not everyone in the audience might know the term “life skills”. Can you clarify that for me?
DR. GLENDA PATE: Those are students with more significant difficulties, fall within the moderate to severe cognitive range, may have some physical limitations, cognitive limitations, visual issues, language issues.
WADE WINGLER: Are there pieces of iPad accessibility, things like voiceover or some of the built-in accessibility features that you found to be particularly useful yet?
DR. GLENDA PATE: I do like the voiceover. What I’ve noticed though is when you go to do the swipe with three fingers, it’s almost too complicated for some of my students. We are having to back it up and go with something more simple side.
WADE WINGLER: Talk to me about apps a little bit. I know it seems like every time assistive technology comes up these days, it’s all about the apps. Are there apps you guys are using, finding useful? What’s going on there?
DR. GLENDA PATE: There are so many apps out there. Right now is just seeing what is there, what meet specific needs, and trying them. If you go to look for research, there really isn’t research on specific apps. They are changing so quickly. Something new everyday. It’s a challenge to stay on top and know what is out there and what can be used.
WADE WINGLER: What is your process? How do you learn about apps? How do you decide what you’re going to try? When you do decide to try one, what does that process look like?
DR. GLENDA PATE: I do like to shop. There is App Miner and App Shopper and also going to the App Store and seeing what the new ones are. Look at what it says, see if there are any reviews, then download it and try it.
WADE WINGLER: We on our website have an app list. That’s how our process works. We hear one from a review or we bump into it and we try it. We are finding out that there are a lot of apps that sound better than they actually perform. Has that been your experience?
DR. GLENDA PATE: That’s exactly what I’ve found. They look really good until I download them and start playing with them, work not play, and it really doesn’t do what I wanted to do.
WADE WINGLER: Are there any apps that, as of the recording of this – right now we are in fall of 2011 – that have been home runs for you, that worked particularly well for students?
DR. GLENDA PATE: My favorite one is read to go. It’s $19.99. If you have an account with book share, I can get the books, then load them for each student, and read to go will read the book to the student. It highlights it as it goes. I think it’s a wonderful program.
WADE WINGLER: So far in terms of working with students who are in the special ed program, what kind of surprises have you seen, either positive or negative?
DR. GLENDA PATE: We rolled out the iPads to the life skills students right before fall break. It was one of those days that was fairly rewarding. It reminds me why I like my job. The enthusiasm, the excitement. We put them in their hands and they love them. We did several math programs, typing programs. I can see it as a way that they can do the work, be successful, it is rewarding and will not be paper/pencil/teacher/lecture, things they can’t do.
WADE WINGLER: Without saying too much about a particular student, is there a story that struck with you or you found particularly heartwarming or rewarding with this?
DR. GLENDA PATE: Two boys were so excited to get them. We had sent them emails because they were setting up their email accounts. The one young man was so excited to actually have his own email account. He was sitting there typing emails and sending them. We have another student whose mother works with the school district. Every morning she will send him an email and he will send it back. Again we are working on reading, writing skills.
WADE WINGLER: I hadn’t thought about that, but I suppose email is a modern-day rite of passage.
DR. GLENDA PATE: Yes it is.
WADE WINGLER: One of the things I think we missed sometimes, focusing on the field of assistive technology, I was in a meeting with a colleague who said, just the iOS device itself is perhaps some of the best assistive technology, using the calendar and organization and tasks and to do list. Those things on their own or sometimes the answer without something special on top of that.
DR. GLENDA PATE: That’s what we all use as adults. It’s just teaching the students to use that and how to use it effectively.
Another good program I’ve seen – I’m not sure it’s on here. It’s a short video, housekeeping from how cast. It shows them how to do common household tasks such as cleaning the toilet, cleaning the toaster, making the bed, sweeping the floor. Just being able to show them the video, and the student will do community work. View the video, do the job task. We can film them and come back, are you doing what you saw in the video? That’s a neat thing. We are still working towards that.
Cookie doodle is one of our favorites. That’s down as a game. Cookie doodle is one of the first one we had the students do. Basically you’re making cookies. You go to the menu and pick out what kind of cookies you want to do and then you have to follow the directions. We will get sugar cookies. You have to roll it out – again being able to manipulate the screen.
WADE WINGLER: You chose a particular kind of dough, and as a rolling pin. You’re dragging your finger around to flatten the dough with this virtual rolling pin.
DR. GLENDA PATE: If I want to do my cookie-cutter, I’ll, it out so I have to press on it, and I can decorate it.
WADE WINGLER: You can choose from all kinds of animal cookie cutters and push the one you want.
DR. GLENDA PATE: There is a recipe with this. If you do the recipe, it gives you the directions. You have to follow the directions. It says three cups of flour. You need to put the flour in, crack the eggs and slice the butter. Again it’s just showing the student how they would do it. We’ll do the grocery shopping. We have the recipe. It ties in together.
One of the things we want to focus on is have the life skills for students to be as independent as possible. If they are able to cook for themselves, they are not waiting for an adult to come in and take care of them.
***
WADE WINGLER: As I started to look around and talk to folks about the implications of iPad high school on students with disabilities, I started to talk to some of my colleagues and get some opinions of things I hadn’t thought about before. I was excited and mostly worried about what this would cost me if my kid breaks it. As I talk more with folks who are experts in the field, I start to get some opinions. I recently interviewed Patrick Black who is the author of Teaching All Students blog and an exceptional educator himself. He is one of the host of the Exceptional Podcast. I encourage you to take that out. I asked him what he thought about iPad high school. Here’s what Patrick had to say.
PATRICK BLACK: How do I phrase it? It’s great in one respect. I think it’s great to have the mobile platform. I can remember carrying 20 pound bookbags home. To have everything available on the textbook on my iPad. Right now I’m a person who carries my computer everywhere. Everything I wanted on my computer. I see the benefit to that. On the flipside, I see the limitations of the iPad software at this point. There are still limitations with textbooks. Some of them you can’t annotate, record, to those multiple means of expression type things and all the apps. Until we are to the point where an iPad can replace the computer for 99 percent of it, I think we are limiting ourselves. I think we are limiting the kids because they are going to get to a point where they are not getting everything out of what they can. It’s great and one perspective, great that you have that mobile platform available, but I think there is an inherent limitation that isn’t completely understood yet.
***
WADE WINGLER: And then I spent a little time talking with one of my friends, Vicki Hirschman, who is the director of the PATINS Project and an expert on things related to K-12 assistive technology.
Today we are at the PATINS office. I’m going to be talking with Vicki Hirschman who is the project director. I guess my first question is, what is your impression of using tablet PCs, mobile devices, iPads in the education setting in general?
VICKI HIRSCHMAN: I think the first thing you have to know is that the state Board of Education redefined what a textbook was in 2009. In 2009, they set a textbook is any systematically organized set of materials that teaches a major subject area and teaches to the standard. When they rolled that out, what they were looking to do was to open up and allow more flexibility to local school districts to do things like what Danville is doing with their iPad initiative. They also – in that rollout, in redefining it because they did that – they change the textbook reimbursement. Now school districts can include in that textbook fees that they pass on to families, the cost of a computer or a tablet. That had a big impact first. School districts then had to apply for a waiver if they were not going to use one of the textbooks that the state had approved on the adoption list. They change to that language and put a blank waiver in. No district has to use a book that is been adopted by the state – for that matter, they don’t have to use any textbooks. Many of our districts are replacing the textbook with digital online learning environments. That’s a wonderful thing because technology provides a more level playing field for a lot of our students with disabilities.
But there are also some pitfalls to be aware of. That’s one of our concerns in this project is helping our LEA’s understand what those pitfalls might be before they get too mired down in them.
WADE WINGLER: What kind of advice do you have for school systems and developers and people who are trying to make this better? What advice would you give folks?
VICKI HIRSCHMAN: I think the biggest concern we have is low compliance. There’s an old adage that says everybody does better when everybody does better. That’s where we need to be with this. In other words, thinking about accessibility has to be systemic, whether you are the vendor creating that curriculum and packaging it and selling it to the school district, or you are the school district creating your own curriculum in an online learning environment, whether you are the business office and that school who is doing the purchasing, or the curriculum development folks who are looking at what they are going to adopt or create, or you’re the teacher in the classroom who is creating worksheet on a daily basis for kids to utilize. If accessibility isn’t part of that conversation in everything you do, then we are never going to have compliance with things like federal regulations requiring that all students have equal access. Those are our biggest issues. We really need school districts to move towards that. The PATINS project is beginning to roll out next month a pledge to our school districts, asking them to pledge to look at things like whether the formatting is correct if it is web-based, if it is something they are creating themselves looking at formatting, the computer user interfaces, as well as the content. Those are the kinds of things we need school districts to do. We need them to say accessibility is going to be a part of every conversation we have around curriculum, whether it is the teaching materials or assessment or the way a teacher provides the instruction. All of those pieces. The computer, technology, provides lots of advantages. It has some barriers. But when you address some of the issues, it’s for all kids, not just kids with disabilities. Think about situational things. If your daughter were given a one to one laptop computer program, or if the school had it and you didn’t have it at home, you can have situational issues. You could have an old computer that doesn’t have fast Internet or no speaker so you can’t hear the multimedia that is going on, those kinds of issues. The other thing is the multimedia is a big barrier with students with disabilities because it is so difficult to make it accessible for kids with mobility problems, low vision and blindness, learning problems whether cognitive or learning disabled, or print disabled. In the end, you are still dealing with the printed word whether it’s on a textbook or computer screen or tablet. I think school districts need to have guidelines. They need to say we have policies in place and guidelines address that, the consideration of the curriculum all the way through to purchasing. We have been working with school districts to get them to write district guidelines before they start an initiative such as the iPad initiative so that they are sure they are addressing all those issues. Once they do that, we would love to say we could completely remove all of the barriers, but at least minimize them to the extent possible.
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WADE WINGLER: It doesn’t matter what kid we are talking about. If it is the special ed or regular student like my daughter Katie, kids are getting used to the iPad and there are lots of assistive technology applications. It is a process. It takes time to get used to it. We fast forward a few weeks after Katie has had a chance to learn about her iPad and some of response ability that come with it. Here is an interesting situation.
The reason we’re having this conversation is a couple of days ago I got an email from on your teachers.
JIM RINEHEART: Do we have to set on the podcast?
WADE WINGLER: Yeah. What did it say basically?
JIM RINEHEART: I’m on my iPad too much in class. I shouldn’t be.
WADE WINGLER: The email said that you are using it for a toy more than a tool.
JIM RINEHEART: Is that what it said? Yeah?
WADE WINGLER: Of course I said to the teacher, yet we are going to talk about this and deal with it. My question was, how much does that happen? Are you the only kid in school who is using it that way or does anybody do that?
JIM RINEHEART: Definitely not. There are some people that are probably using it as a toy or than I am, which is weird because I use it a lot. But they are people that use it more than I do.
WADE WINGLER: So when the teacher says you are using it as a toy, what does that mean? Give me some examples of what that means.
JIM RINEHEART: We will be doing something in class and I will look down and realize I have three emails and I have to check it right now. Katie, put the iPad away. I have to do that because I probably should be doing something more important than that email.
WADE WINGLER: The question is, if a teacher sends you an email, is it okay to check it anytime? If I send you an email, is it okay to check it anytime? Or if a friend sends an email, is it okay to check it out anytime? How do you know what the rules are for when and who and how it’s okay to email?
JIM RINEHEART: During class, if we are actually doing something like working on something to turn in by the end of the period or something, then you just need to gather up your self-control, put your iPad away, deal with your social stuff later – which even I can do that believe it or not. Sometimes if you’re being lectured, or not doing much in class like TSS which is where we just work on whatever during class for a half an hour, and you have nothing to do, everyone is on their iPad email, playing games. Some people have found ways to get through games. Some people – I’m guilty of this – use it at inappropriate times. They are also times where we feel we need to use it.
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WADE WINGLER: When I heard the iPads were coming, I knew we would learn some things. Although I think we may be learning things that we didn’t expect, there is a lot more going on in math and science and reading and those kinds of things. There is learning how to manage the social pressure of checking your email during class, a whole bunch of teachers having to figure out how to manage this new technology in the classroom with kids of all abilities. I think there is a whole lot of the field of assistive technology in what is going to happen with iPads and Tablet PCs and those kinds of things. I think it’s an incredibly exciting time. I also think there are some signs along the road we need to be watching that warn us of how this technology might have some challenges to go along with it. We’d like to thank everybody who participated in this episode. We also will link to those folks’ contact information in the show notes if you want to follow up with any guest on the show. You can do that by visiting the website. Tell us what you thought, give us a call, 317-721-7124. Drop us a note on Twitter at INDATA Project, or visit our website at www.eastersealstech.com. Next week we’ll be back with news, questions, and answers in our regular show format. I’m Wade Wingler with the INDATA Project at Easter Seals crossroads in Indiana.
