February 2023
AT for Sustaining Learning Engagement
09/02/23 18:32
It’s truly time for us to wake up to the fact that #assistivetechnology is an invaluable solution for sustaining learning engagement in struggling students while we in turn are struggling to get interventions in place. We waste children’s precious time planning how we’re going to assist them as they fall by the wayside. With Assistive Technology we can act immediately to alter their outcomes until our interventions take effect (and even after). Case in point so many children lose interest in reading while our interventions take considerable time to teach them how to do that independently. There is literally no logic behind preventing these children from listening and visually tracking text until they can do it on their own. As a matter of fact, research proves that assistive technologies actually foster greater reading skills, and if that’s not enough for you here’s a study that shows that students retain information just as effectively by listening or reading. Let’s wake up and stop letting kids fail unnecessarily. Furthermore, this isn’t just an Educational issue, this is a mental health issue when you consider students with learning disabilities are four times more likely to face this challenge as well because of the inaccessibility of learning materials they experience on a daily basis. https://www.jneurosci.org/content/39/39/7722
