Reflection # 8

Last week I got to spend the afternoon in a self-contained classroom at a local high school. It was very interesting to see how technology was incorporated in a classroom where all but one of the students could not speak and several had limited motion. The students had little remotes that they could push to play music and change songs on a computer while lying down. They also had a smart board where students could turn pages and have a story read to them.
The technology was very helpful because the students did not need to be able to speak in order to communicate what they wanted. It would be too difficult for a student to say what song they wanted or go and change a cd, but with the computer system, students only needed to press a button. In the same way, the students did not have the fine motor skills to turn a page, but they could still participate in reading a story by pressing the smart board.
I think it will be very interesting to see in what other ways technology can be incorporated into self contained classrooms.