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"When combined with appropriate instruction, technology can turn struggling students into successful students." 

Lynne Anderson-Inman, University of Oregon

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Technology as a tool for meeting curriculum goals is an important area of focus for OSEP, and one that is showing great promise. Researchers are exploring how students can use technology to act on information and thereby learn. As such, technology is emerging as a cognitive tool or "partner," that supports the learning process. 

The following research-based applications have been selected to show how technology is being integrated into curriculum and instruction to support a wide range of student abilities.

Enhancing Literacy Goals

"I liked using computers to write personal stories."

"You could learn how to read and write by writing on chatroom."

Students in Krausey's class were part of an OSEP-funded research study being conducted by Michigan State University researcher, Carol Sue Englert. "We have developed and are now evaluating a web-based curriculum for elementary students with mild disabilities that enhances literacy learning, particularly writing." 

The web site called TELE-Web (which stands for Technology-Enhanced Learning Environments on the Web), serves as a literacy development environment. It offers teachers and students a set of integrated, multifunctional tools, consisting of server-side software and client-side plug-ins that work with a web server and database applications. It enables teachers to adopt, develop, manage, and share multimedia literacy materials, as well as to initiate, conduct and manage collaborative learning projects. Students' reading and writing responses also can be archived.

"Within the web site environment, students explore, experiment, and experience independently and collaboratively with their peers from the same school or from a school afar," Englert describes. "We have also included tools that help students develop performance abilities in reading and writing, in addition to the metacognitive skills related to becoming goal-oriented, self-regulatory, independent learners." 
 

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"TELE-Web increases and enhances academic skills of students with special needs. What's more, because students teach others as they learn, they build self-confidence and self-esteem." 

Patricia A. Rose, Principal, Post Oak Elementary School

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TELE-Web in the Classroom

• Teachers and students to create assignments.

• Students to create, revise, and complete assignments.

• Teachers and students to add on or to comment on other students' work.

• Students to read other students' stories.

• TELE-Writing Room. A KWL (what I know, want to know, have learned about) activity on castles; retelling stories in one's own words; creating cognitive webs; play and story writing.

• TELE-Reading Room. Castle spelling words; castle chat.

• TELE-Library. Internet search on castles; castle word-sort; email to people knowledgeable about castles in Poland and Scotland.

• TELE-Publishing Room. Stories for editing and comments; journal of castle life contrasts.

Improving Access to the Science Curriculum

• Help students develop understandings about important science concepts.

• Ensure access to instructional activities, allowing students to participate more fully as inquirers.

• Provide students with the tools they need to observe the world around them, gather data, document what they find, and communicate their findings to others.

To support educators in talking about children's science learning, Zorfass and Project Director, Lori DiGisi, created an action/reflection process. The team cycles-and then re-cycles-through these phases:

• Plan activities.

• Implement instruction.

• Reflect on progress.

After the plan is completed, the teacher implements the lesson. Typically, some of the team members also participate. Their role is to closely observe the focus children and gather data on their responses to the lesson. Observers also interact with these children, questioning or probing them to explain their thinking. In some cases, team members try different teaching methods to see what works with a particular child. An important task for team members is recording what children say as they engage in an inquiry. Such information is of critical importance during the reflection phase. 

The reflection phase occurs soon after the lesson. Each team member shares the data he or she has gathered regarding student learning. The teacher and the specialists describe, interpret, and reflect on the students' work as it relates to the criteria that have been set. According to DiGisi, "This conversation gives every member of the team feedback on how their suggestions worked within the context of the science lesson; but it also provides a time to generalize beyond the targeted students to the class as whole and to plan for the next action/reflection cycle."

School District Teams

Special Needs Technologist Alan Field, who has been working with numerous ASSIST groups in Cambridge, Massachusetts, notes the importance of starting with curriculum. "This is not a fix-it type of approach. With a grounding in curriculum and instruction, technology applications are much easier to integrate." This has been an important distinction for teachers, according to Field, who, he says, view their participation as "satisfying the needs of all students, rather than just using technology for technology's sake."

While data and analysis are yet forthcoming, project staff and practitioners are learning a great deal. "One thing is very clear-it definitely calls for someone to undertake a new role of curriculum/technology specialist," Field says. "Unlike traditional technology specialists who troubleshoot problems and help write technology plans, I actually work in classrooms with teachers to support and promote technology in the curriculum-something I could not do very well without a deep understanding of science."
 

Improving Concept Development in Mathematics

Unlike traditional math story problem lessons where students read a problem in text and are expected to calculate answers, Bush takes the data from real-life problems and enters it into a spreadsheet program. No longer hampered by reading difficulties and laborious calculations, students begin manipulating the data and formulating answers-activities, Bush points out that, "typically are not thought possible for students with cognitive disabilities."

Bush has been working with researcher John Woodward of the University of Puget Sound in Washington. With the support of OSEP and Microsoft Corporation, Woodward has been studying how technology can be integrated into mathematical problem solving activities to provide access to students with cognitive disabilities. "Essentially, technology enables us to engage students with disabilities in challenging curriculum-which is a major accomplishment given that many experts believe that students who do not possess basic math skills cannot learn higher level math skills." 

Spreadsheets are an excellent tool because they model or provide visual representations of the problem, crunch the calculations (which Woodward points out is a tedious turn-off for many youngsters, but especially the case for students with disabilities), and thereby focus the students' attention on understanding the mathematical operations in a real-life context. "We are finding that spreadsheets free students who heretofore had difficulty with math to keep asking questions, to continue analyzing the visual representations of the data, and eventually to use their higher level thinking skills to formulate conclusions-kids are really thinking through what mathematical problem solving really means." One of Woodward's most promising findings is that when computer-generated visual representations are tied to concepts rather than to answers, the student's ability to think mathematically is enhanced.