Educational Technology Essay

With the passage of time, the advances of technology are making their presence felt in every walk of life from space exploration to clean a room. The central though behind these technological advances is to make life more comfortable, efficient, and safe. As such technology is an integral part of daily workaday life. Newer forms of technology are being introduced with improved rates of efficiency, safety, and comfort. In this regard, inclusion of technology in education has also become the hard norm of the present educational system of such a country as the United States of America with the same focus as quoted above. Henceforth, all important areas of educational development have been hinged with the inclusion of technology. One such area of focus today, with regard to the inclusion of technology in education, is the educational development of the disabled and other disadvantage students’ enhanced learning. The present paper examines in detail the inclusion of technology in education with relation to the learning of disabled and disadvantaged students. The paper first of all discusses the present literature on the present state of educational technology and disabled learners; furthermore, the present paper specifically examines studies conducted in the same area to investigate the legitimacy on educational technology inclusion to teach the disabled students, say, English language, and see what difference the technology inclusion makes upon the learning of the students. Literature Review In the past several decades, changing perspectives on the use of technology inclusion in education for the disabled students has caused the curricular guidance to undergo changes that are significant on their own. It was in the time of the 1970s and the 1980s that parents and teachers came to realize the vision that graduating students with disabilities could now go on living and working in the general community environment with some support that differed according to individual. This vision, then, bypassed the shelters of workshops, centers for day treatment, and other massive settings for residential purposes which were indispensable for the previous students. This revolutionary vision then gave birth to â€Å"the development of curricula that were relevant to students’ functioning to everyday life† (Davern, et.al, 2001). In addition to the above, the Individual with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA, 1997) also paved the way for the educators to look for technology inclusion that can boost up learning in the disabled students; hence the premise of this act is that: A free and appropriate public education will be provided for all children with special needs. IDEA 97 emphasizes the participation of students with disabilities in the general curriculum and requires that Individualized Education Program (IEP) teams make many decisions that support and encourage student performance in the general curriculum and general education classroom (Robinson, et.al, 2002). However, when it comes to the participation of the disabled students in the learning of more complex cognitive content (say reading comprehension or learning vocabulary, and so on) with the mainstream education, with their peers, it is seen as an obstacle that these students show a difference of learning from their peers. Hence there are various involvements made by researchers. These interventions focus on overcoming these differences among the two types of learners. â€Å"Curriculum-based assessment†, â€Å"Direct instruction curriculum design†, and â€Å"learning strategies Deshier† are some of them (Carnine, 1989). Today, as such, technology is fast becoming the norm of the area of educating the learners with disabilities. The times of the twenty first century has given rapid rise to technology integration in education. Henceforward, as Dr. Frank B. Withrow, Director of Development Able Company Washington D.C. (2000) notes that â€Å"Technology predictions for the 21st century include sensory prosthetic devices for disabled people. This may be one of the most significant factors in providing all children an equal and appropriate education.† He further points out that â€Å"Cochlear implants are already providing many hard of hearing youngsters with functional hearing.† Moreover, â€Å"Speech synthesizers give voice to mute individuals. New developments in microelectronic lenses may enable a large number of visually disabled people to read printed books† (Frank, 2000) However, it is another thing to investigate the integration of technology and its feasibility with the production: effectiveness of technology with regard to the learning rate of the students with disabilities. In the later part of the paper I would examine the role of technology in relation to this very theme. I would discuss the role of the educational software for the special education. Educational Software and Special Students Today, like all other areas of education, special education is also influenced by the introduction of newer and newer software that provide the educators the opportunities to better teach the disabled students so that their learning can be worth it. Since commercial software for education usually shapes the center of instruction which is technology-based in special education (also for general classroom education), there is a very rapid race among the educational authorities to obtain the most effective and result-oriented software. However, with the advances made in this area, there are certain concerns raised by the educators and researchers about the feasibility of these software packages with regard to effective learning among the disabled students. In this connection, the most common practice found among the educators is that they â€Å"rely on experts in commercial businesses to produce quality educational software for classroom use, with the assumption that the software has been designed to meet the unique learning needs of the population of students for whom it is targeted† (Boone, et.al, 2000). In other words, the consumers of the software assume that the software was properly designed and developed with a population being the focus of that software, for example, students with disabilities, junior school students, students learning English as a second language, and so forth. The net result that these consumers anticipate from the software obtained, as such, is that it will help them improve the learning capabilities of their students – in our case students with learning disabilities and disadvantaged students. On the contrary, Boone et al. (p. 109, 2000) observe that though many of the software developers are aware of the fact that consulting educational experts and researchers is way important in order to develop a result-oriented, population-targeted software, â€Å"some companies still develop software without taking into account education factors that may affect learning† (Boone, et.al, 2000). They point out three major areas regarding such software development for the disabled students, which were major concerns of the educators: 1) The developed software did not have a theoretical base for its formation; 2) There is an overemphasis on such technical aspects of the software as high graphic designs and audio add-ons; and 3) The software development manifested an improper approach toward educational concerns. With these three major concerns, Boone et al. (2000) also list three major areas – investigated in a Delphi research study – which, according to educators, the educational software for the disabled students was proved to be lacking. These areas are: 1) The investigation revealed that software lacked an incorporation or association of higher-level of thinking; 2) The software also lacked a grounding in the educational research and pedagogical investigation of the related teaching content to the disabled students; 3) The last major area of lacking of the educational software for the disabled students was that the software lacked the inclusion of a number of different level skills which can be used to effectively meet an individual’s specific needs. Therefore, Forcier, 1999 (as cited in Boone et al. p. 01, 2000) notes that because of these so complex issues with regard to the educational software, it seems unclear as to which degree such educational improvisation is actually meeting the needs of the educators/teachers and their students. (Boone, et.al, 2000) Evaluation of Software Boone et al. (2000) point out the importance of the educational for the disabled students so that their feasibility can be put to a check. For the evaluation of an educational software, the authors state that many of the educational software developers and publishers are not providing enough information to the educators. This is a practical problem for the educators who opt for a specific software program available in the market suiting the needs of their educational context; however: (Boone, et.al, 2000) â€Å"Educators often find that software they have purchased is not adaptable, does not teach what it purports to teach, or does not support what is occurring in the classroom. For these reasons, educators must independently evaluate software by taking into consideration the following†. (Boone, et.al, 2000) 1) The educators must look for the software’s intended use by monitoring the help that the software lends to achieve their objectives; 2) Content which accompanies the software must be scrutinized; it is also seen whether or not the software has a teacher’s supplement for implementation; 3) â€Å"the instructional presentation and whether the software meets the principles of universal design (i.e., multiple representations of content, multiple means of expression and control, and multiple forms of engagement)† (Boone, et.al, 2000); 4) they should also go for software that is user-friendly: that is easy to use both by the teacher(s) and students; 5) the software should also provide considerable amount of documents and other support; 6) The software should also contain user inputs. With these areas in mind, the authors further come up with the evaluation criteria of the two kinds of evaluation of the software: formative and summative evaluation through the use of the software to make sure of its compatibility with the learning of the disabled students. I discuss both these steps of the evaluations separately so that a thorough understanding of the issue can be grasped. Formative Evaluation and Learning Software for Disabled Students To evaluate the efficiency of software for students with disabilities Boone et al (2000) state that the first and the foremost focus of the educators should be to take into account an area of the students’ learning and/ or other aspects of their life; this are can be the learning characteristics of those students; or their learning goals; or it can be the area of their social skills and goals, and so on. After this specification, the educators should put the software to test on a across-student level, that is to say: Software evaluation by students should involve a high-achieving student, a middle-achieving student, and a low-achieving student who all have a particular disability. This allows the educator to determine the software’s usability across students with a particular disability and, beforehand, to identify specific areas in the software with which particular students may need help (Boone, et.al, 2000). They also give a precaution to the educators that they should not count on the opinions of the parents of the students because it is possible that some software is not efficient to adults; however, the same is greatly enjoyed by the students.