WEST VIRGINIA UNIVERSITY CENTER FOR EXCELLENCE IN DISABILITIES ASSISTIVE TECHNOLOGY EMBEDDED WITHIN SCHOOL SYSTEMS: EFFECTS AND NEXT STEPS NOVEMBER 10, 2020 CART CAPTIONING PROVIDED BY: ALTERNATIVE COMMUNICATION SERVICES, LLC** Www.captionfamily.com * * * * * Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility. CART captioning and this realtime file may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings. * * * * November 10, 2020 November 10, 2020. Testing testing November 10, 2020. I am Christine Quinn. From ACS. Captioner. Let me introduce you and I know you have your team with you today. So I will introduce you and if you want to introduce them we will go about that. As we get started some house keeping. Welcome to the CED ability Grand rounds for what month is it? It is November already. And I appreciate the opportunity to introduce Dr. Laura king for this month's speaker. I do want to ask everyone to mute your lines. During the presentation and then we will have a question and answer period toward the end or Dr. King we will also monitor the chat room or follow other questions throughout. But the other thing if you are not familiar with the zoom is definitely the chat, please use that to ask any questions or comments. During the presentation and I believe that's it. In terms of introducing Dr. King. Dr. King is an associate professor in the department of special education foundation and research. A current director of the Irene howl technology center or IHAT. Her research includes technology, design for learning and disability and higher education. Real quickly, Dr. King obtained her masters and doctorate of special education at the university of central Florida and bachelors of special education in the university of -- people BROOG. >> We are excited to be here. There are two young ladies with me. Taylor Seymour and Tiffany Robertson. Taylor is a senior so she will be graduating in the spring. We will be sad to see her go. But happy that she is moving to her first teaching position. And Tiffany will be with me for another year. She is a June junior in special education as well. The only thing I would add to that is make sure everybody is aware that I have a severe hearing disability and I rely on lip readings which isn't the best in meetings. So I will rely on crystal who is doing my CART captioning. If you are patient with that that would be great. We are excited to share what we've been doing in the Irene Howell assistive technology center. Here. The first thing I'm going to do is give you a background of what our story is and what the mission of it is. So I'm going to go ahead and share my screen and show you our presentation. I'm not coming up with the option. Melina do you have the ability to assign Dr. King? >> Taylor, are you able to? It doesn't come up as an option when I click it. If you are go back to our story and mission that would be great. Thank you so much, Taylor. What I wanted to tell you is this is a picture of Irene Howell. She passed away maybe about five or six years ago. She and her husband Gordon, our eastern north Carolina local family that had a Grand child with disabilities. So from that place of service in part they started the life mission dealing with local resources with working with individuals with disabilities. They started the Howell assistive center here outside of Greenville for individuals with severe disabilities. And they also have another center across the region. But for her work with east Carolina she wanted to focus on having support groups for teachers. Special education teachers. Because her Grandson didn't get a lot of support Early years. So she wanted to make sure when special education teachers graduated they were more aware of the resources and things they could do. So that's where it started from. It was an endowment gift and Mr. MOUL just passed away this summer. So the college of education funded this until the endowment comes into play. But the annual budget runs $15,000 to $20,000 a year and it is expected to continue. And the early years of the AT center was focussed on working with the one special education technology class that most Universities offer in their plan of study. And in addition to that they would do introductory tours of the lab for the early experience courses or inclusion courses. Over the course of one semester you were probably dealing with 60 or 80 student that is were in the lab and got a little hands on with that. And when I started in 2012 in the lab as director, that was one of the things we really wanted to change. We wanted to get all of college education majors more aware about working with individuals with disabilities. What AT is. How it could help in the classroom and universal design for learning was gaining traction so we add that had piece in there as well. So now our special education course of study has IHAT professional development sessions embedded from students, freshman to semester and finish by the time they are in junior two. And other college administration may jurors take a minimum of four of our sessions. So every teacher, education candidate is learning about AT in their technology class they take two sessions and they experience the courses they take two sessions. In addition to that we've grown to where graduate students in speech language pathology and occupational therapy are adding in sessions as well. So when we started we really had this Grand idea which worked really well for the first too years of having face to face sessions that were facilitated in the lab. Students would go to an online registration site and register for whatever sessions they wanted and they would come in and our students would teach those sections and you got a lot of hands on with the assistive technologies that were there. Over time that proved to be a little less sustainable because of the knowledge and skill level that was required. And frankly, the students just graduate too fast. So we started -- we already had a number of sessions online because we needed to have that equity there. So over time we just kept moving it online and it and it got easier with conferences and easy to facilitate for students and for us. And as a blessing in disguise we were ready for the . We were ready for the Pandemic. We are going to share the AT curriculum piece and the professional development session. If I can ask Taylor to switch the site up. and the other pieces in the IHAT center that I wanted to briefly touch base on is we have a David powers lending library. We have a number of items that are mid tech and low tech AT and a few of the higher tech AT mainly communication devices. All of our students are able to check that out and use them in the practical settings or even for individual use. We also offer technical support for AT. Especially for the ones that we have embedded in our sessions. And in the beginning of the AT lab they did do some AT evaluations in the community. Since we've started the professional development sessions I backed away from that mainly as a sustainability concern and really focussed on AT consultations. So occasional -- occasionally I get asked to work with community or school based associations. Now we can turn it over to Tiffany who will begin sharing to you what we teach in our sessions. >> I'm going to share my screen real quick. So the first session that we offer is our intro to AT and UDL. This is something that all types of majors complete this one so it could be anything from education majors to recreational therapy and our lateral ent tristudents as well. The session shares in depth about the universal design for architecture and it's how you can use universal design to make everything accessible for individuals with disabilities. Things that the students see in this session are the buttons you press to open doors. Ramps instead of stairs, or having a ramp in addition to the stairs. Having larger doorways so that wheelchairs can fit through them. This kind of gives students a more in depth understanding of what universal design is and how they see it in their every day lives. Once they have an understanding of universal design we shift to sharing how this concept has been put into a framework with with a focus on learning which with which is what we call universal learning or udl. Students learn about academic content and in STRUKS and how it could be adapted to meet the needs of all learners. We will learning how to adapt that all learners have the same opportunities. So this is just for example, presenting information visually, auditorily, even tactile. And this is just one of the things that the students learn about the universal design for learning. Session then introduces what assistive technology is and grounds it in the legal definition of the term. They gain awareness of the low, mid and high tech AT devies that are used by individuals with disabilities. And a big misconception is that assistive technology is what most people think of as an communication device. It's what they would be using to communicate. And AT is so much more than that. It is highlighters, it is white boards, it is fidget toys. Different things like that so our students -- this session helps our students to understand that -- AT is more than a communication device. It is the small things you can add into the day to make curriculum more accessible. The goal of this session is to give students insight as to what assistive technology and universal design for learning is. And by understanding these two things they have a better idea of how to make their content accessible to all students. At the end of the session we have an assessment where the students take a quiz on the definition of UDL, the different types of AT they learned about and share how they are going to use what they learned in their future profession. That is something you will see with all of our sessions is that we have them take what they have learned and apply it to their future career. That way me being a special education major I'm going to use this stuff absolutely. But let's say someone who is not a special education major is taking this, this allows them to go far beyond okay, I've done it and completed it. It's how can I use this in the future? How can I continue to implement it? And this allows us to know that the students are understanding what they've learned. They are able to take it, connect it to their field of study and able to teach it to others or able to use it in their every day live. Our next session is alternate access and this solely focuses on the assistive technology devices that could be used so individuals with disabilities can access the same thing as their peers without disabilities via technology. This is the same idea of universal design when you talk about getting inside of a building, utilizing public spaces. Planning for access is best when you do it at the very beginning. When you automatically think of how can I make this accessible for everyone rather than creating your plan and going okay, how can we change it? It's better to start from the beginning and make it accessible to everyone. In this session we present students with various items to get an idea what alternate access is. So we show them the different types of keyboards. Different computer mice and accessibility features on their own devices. It allows them to see with the keyboard how the person who may be able to use one hand to type, how they would go about doing that. It allows them to see how a person who is visually impaired or blind may go about doing the same things they do. What I like about this session is that we show exactly how assistive technology could be used different settings. So although this is for educate majors, we tell you how you can use assistive technology in art classes. How you can use it when you are in occupational therapy or a social work major. So it shows you that this is more than just inside of a classroom. We are really expanding it to everyone who does take these sessions. After learning about the different devices and apps that could be used, the students go on to their own devices and see what they can find in terms of accessibility features. This allows students to see just how at the tip of our fingers this is. This is on your own device. Everyone nowadays carries a smart phone with them. That is at the tip of your fingers. Almost everyone has access to a computer or laptop. We have them look on their own devices to see what they can find. And a lot of times they are using these accessibility features and don't even know it. I know I use BODA text a lot of the the time. That is an accessibility feature but I did not know about it and learned about it. Just to show you how easy it is. If I go to my settings on my computer. What I love about this is obviously there is accessibility here but you can type in accessibility up at the top and click on it. And it shows you where it all is. And then from here it gives you all of the options. So if I wanted to -- for the display, I can invert the colors on my computer. For audio, you can flash the screen when a sound occurs. These are just different things so they go on to their own devices and find these things so they can see how accessible it is. A big point that we wanted students to take away from this session is that it is always with you. It's is something you will always be able to find and always use. This is something everyone can use. It doesn't have to be individuals with disabilities. Like I said, I use the text on my phone so I can see it better. So at the conclusion of this session, so that we can evaluate the students understanding of what they learned they submit screen shots of the accessibility features they have found on their computer. A reflection of how they found it. What they thought bit and research and assistive technology device and explain their thoughts on it, their research. They give us a solution to a given scenario. We give them a scenario. And they have to provide us with what AT they think would best help that students succeed in that class. And once again they give a reflex connecting this back to how can you -- reflection connecting it back to how can you use it in your future profession. You are are not just learning how to use it in your classroom but connecting it back to your profession. The next session we have is assistive technology for behavior or AT for behavior. And this session educates students on the reasons that unwanted behaviors may occur and the different interventions that could be put into place to limit those behaviors. So a lot of those interventions that we talk about are assistive technology. What devices can be used to help deal with behaviors that may not be appropriate in a classroom? So what is great about this session is that we have preservice teachers, occupational therapists and others in this field research assistive technology. So that is something that you are learning how to do before you get out into the field. You are able to research assistive technology and find it on your own and find out more information about it. Not just Googling something. So in this session there is quite a few videos and apps that are linked that touch on assistive technology for social skills. And how we can use assistive technology to teach students the appropriate way to go about getting what they want about communicating their needs as well as growing their social skills in a classroom. How they can use the assistive technology to help grow those skills that they already have. So a big point during this session and what we want students to take away is the assistive technology devices that could be used before, during and after a behavior occurs. So for example, at the very beginning you may want -- you are going to want to do issing that is preventative. You want to prevent the behaviors from occurring. Something we talk about in our section is using sensory devices. Or sensory option. Giving a student an fidget toy. It will helplessen the distractions -- helps lessen the distractions. We talk about possibly a job chart. When the student is in the middle of maybe unwanted behavior we can look at the chart or expectations and say I understand that you are feeling overwhelmed. Howky help you achieve or -- how can I help you understand what we are supposed to be doing? It is a way to help get them back on track and help them communicate their wants and needs. And afterwards, communication card. Being able to help the student explain why did this behavior occur? What can we do in the future to communicate it? And what can I do to help you with that as the teacher? So using communication cards to communicate what happened and why it happened. And using AT is -- we want to teach students when it is appropriate to prevent negative behaviors from occurring or getting worse. So at the end of this session students research and find assistive technology to assist students with special need and given behavioral scenarios. We give them scenarios and they have to research assistive technology and tell us what they think would best help the student to succeed. And then once again they write a reflex about what they learned and how to use their -- reflection about what they learned and how to use it in their future career. >> Then we have AT for literacy. This session is designed to help students understand the assistive technology that makes reading, reading comprehension, writing and social studies more accessible. So the schools that the -- skills that the students learn in this session is how to work the read and write tool bar. It helps make literature more accessible not to only the individuals with disabilities, but also look at your English language learners. And even me as a college student I have this downloaded on my computer and I use it when I'm reading my textbook. Because a big part of literacy is not only reading the word on the page but understanding what they are saying. Comprehending it and this tool bar helped me also. So they learn about the different features of the read and write go tool bar that I will give a quick demonstration in a few moments and they see how they can help students access content by having highlighted parts read to them. By being able to make a vocabulary list of words by typing in the word. Different things likes that. So another thing with the section is at the very beginning of it students learn about the statistics of literacy research. So one of the facts that stuck out to me is that 68% of all students are below proficiency by the 4th grade when it comes to reading. And there are multiple statistics we have at the begin and the reason we put them at the beginning is they can understand how important being able to access literature is. Reading is something you do every day. Whether it's reading out of a book or reading a sign on the road. Or reading a menu at a restaurant. And that is so important. So we put those statistics apartment the very beginning to help the students understand -- at the very beginning to help students understand why it's important and get them excited about doing the session. >> So this session also highlights the mid, low and high assistive technology devices that could be used to assist literacy, both reading expression which is bouncing off our intro to AT and UDL. They are learning about all of these different assistive technology devices they can use in different settings. And the assessment for this at the very end so that we can evaluate their understanding of it is we have them do a hands on experience with the read and write go tool bar. They go into our VCL and use the read and write tool bar. They go in and do it by themselves and then they submit screen shots to show us what they've learned and they know how to work it and give us reflexes on the different tool bars and what they think of them. How ease which they were to use. If they think they would be able to teach this to students. And then once again they write an overall reflection what they learned and how they can use it in their future profession. This gives us an insight when we are grading it on to if they are able to use a tool bar correctly. How they feel the tool bar could be used in the future. And if this is something that students will be able to use based off of their experience using it. We are also able to offer this software. This read and write tool bar and smart notebook software that Taylor will demonstrate in a little bit through the IHAT virtual desktop application that is our vcl. Virtual computing lab. We work with the department at the university and they can use the IHAT center software as if they were sitting on campus. When I log into it I see the software that is on the computers in the lab. So to demonstrate, I'm going to pull it up. I'm already into VCL. And this up here is the read and write tool bar. Right now I have it on all features. You can go here. This is everything offered on this tool bar all on one. And what is great about this tool bar especially for students that have ADHD is that you can take it and change it to make it just a few of the features. For example, the reading features. We can go to our dictionary and it may take a little while to load. And I can type in any word. So the word I used last night when I was practicing was large. Typing in the word gives me the definition. So they they can do this with any word and something they can do on their own. If they are reading online which is a big thing right now with COVID. Everybody is virtual. They can be able to look up the definitions without having to leave what they are on. They can do it from the top of their tool bar and do it for any word. And it is a student friendly definition. Not something that you look up a word and lit give you a definition that you don't know what the -- will give a definition that you don't know what the words Definition mean. >> If we go to the writing features, this is something that I like using is the picture dictionary. So once again I'm going to use the word large and typing it in. And it gives me pictures that represent that word. So if you had a student who was maybe not using abstract symbols they could use the picture dictionary and it will pull up pictures of what the word is to help give an understanding of what it it is. Under our research tool bar we use this cool thing. This is what we have our students use and it's our fact mapper. It may take a second to pull up. this is something I think is interesting to use because you can map out different things. So -- and it's easy to use. This is a great way to organize your thoughts. I would type in for example special education. And I would click on this and add a bubble. And I could type in the IHAT center because that is something being a special education major I complete all of the sessions at the IHAT center. And from there I can add on assistive technology. It gives you a way to show your thoughts and organize them in an easy way to see. Then our last tool bar that we have students look at is the study skills tool bar. This is where your highlighters are. If a student want today highlight stuff which I always love doing, they can use that. And all of this once again is at the top of your screen. It stays there the entire time. It does not go away unless you close out the application and it could be switched back and forth between these different things. And if you had a student that wanted to have all of them up there like I said you can use the very first one that I had that had all of the features at the top. But it makes accessing literature and accessing content easier and in my opinion more fun. And I'm going to switch it over to Taylor now. >> [Inaudible] >> Taylor, if you can hear us it seems like we are having audio issues. Yeah, I think your audio is off. Most people cannot hear you. Can you hear me now? >>> Yes, that's better. Thank you. >> Perfect. Sorry about that guys. Okay. So like I was saying they receive add grant a few years back. So every classroom almost has a smart board in it. So as preservice teachers it is extremely beneficial to learn how to use the software so skills could be applied in the classroom. The software itself has hundreds of premade lesson templates that I will go over in the memo. But they also have interactive buttons, pictures, text animation available to make custom pages as well. For our students we focus on having them complete a mix of custom slides and editing templates. The attempt to is make sure they realize how important and easy it is to customize slides for their student's needs. And they don't try to force it. On a community shared lesson template without making appropriate edits for those students. Like Tiffany showed you we access this through vcl so again our students have complete access of what our commuters look like in the lab from their bedroom, basically. Students complete several smart pages through the session and then they complete a custom page on their own for our session assessment. How does smart support universal design for learning? Sore for representation when we think about different ways to represent information we are typically thinking about lecture versus video, versus hands on activities. And those do help us offer a variety of different ways for diverse learners to engage in content. However, within each of those we also need to be paying attention to how each of those approaches are represented. So in the smart notebook system we can change FONLTs and colors and graphics to enhance content representation to offer more scaffolding and supports to diverse learners. But what we do focus on in the session is clear versus cool content. Object as you sayry as teachers we want to be cool to our students. We want to cure rate this thing that is so engaging, but the problem with that sometimes is that when we are trying to be cool and trying to be engaging, we also can often lose sight of what is clear. It's not easy to read. It's not easy to interact with. So we do emphasize that in the session. But the great thing about the smart software is a lot of the cool content is very clear and easy to use. For engagement, so how does smart help with that interactive elements? Engaging students in lessons, encourages and motivates learning by incorporating their interests in different learning styles through interactive styles within the less SOP con text. And then for expression. So -- lesson content. >> So smart supports that through different assessment features that we will go over. In our session demo here in a second. So as we said before we access this through the VCL. This is what our VCL desktop looks like and it gives us access to everything that is on our lap computers. This is what smart notebook looks like. And I will go over some of our tools. Here we have our tool bar. Here you can add pages, delete pages. Save files. Present if you have the ability to do so on a smart board. So right here is like our select tool, shapes. You can draw out shapes. It works easily and you can change the color. And move it around easily. The fill, you can change the background color. We do caution our students when doing this. If you are doing whole group instruction maybe not use a color too distracting. It could hurt some people's eyes. It could be distracting for them. If you are Tailoring it to a specific student it could be a little different. And our text tool you can change the size, font. All that fun stuff. And our line tool. Again creating those lessons and our eraser tool. So for our session assessment we do have our students create custom slide. But then we have them go through our activity tool kit. So smart offers like I said before, so many different lessons, templates and games and stuff. That could be inserted and edited and all that fun stuff. I will go through some of them. There is game boards, there is click to reveal answers. Anything you can move to reveal, erase to reveal. If you wanted to erase to reveal all you would do is you will click on a pen, and you are going to color over that and your directions up here will say erase to reveal instead of click to reveal and the students could erase that answer or you if you are doing whole group instruction on the smart board. The other really cool thing is different elements could be locked down into place. On smart. So if -- I don't know if it will let me do it on this one. But there we go. But here we go to lock and I can lock it in place so it can't be moved at all or lock it so my students can only move it vertically or horizontally. So they are using the templates as it is intended basically. >> So that's just a little quick overview of smart. Let me go back to our presentation. So our next session is making adapted books. So when we talk about making an adaptive book what we are really talking about is thinking first about specific student's needs based on their disability characteristics or challenge with literacy. It is critical to think about the student's needs and find or adapt the text to the format that the student needs to be successful. While we could have a number of adaptive books ready to go in our classroom, what we cannot do is lose sight to be effective it has to be personalized to fit specific needs of a student. In this session we focus on three broad populations. Populations are students with hearing or visual impairments. Students with motor impairments and students with cognitive impairments. And not all student needs will be covered in these populations, it will give us a broad enough range where you will see a variety of commonly used adaptions for literacy. And the student the can adapt their thinking and brain storm appropriate options for them. >> To offer more support to a child with a type of sensory impairment such as hearing or vision it is important to offer as many sensory or tactile supports as possible. For someone with a hearing disability you want to find more visible and tactile supports. And then for someone with motor impairments you want to integrate digital text, access, add page fluffers for turning pages. And we will go over some of these examples. And then for our assessment for this seeing we offer two options. So option one students can read through eight scenarios and come up with adaptses for the student -- adaptions and identify an AT device they could use and give their reasoning behind those choices. Here are some examples. For students with visual impairments, the use of tactile supports is importance. This could be done through a variety of materials typically found in craft stores. Think about materials like wiki sticks, feathers, wood. Anything that gives tactile support to the meaning of the text helps support comprehension. Even 3D printing is helpful for making tactile support. In this example they've added tactile supports for each of the animals that is discussed in the book. I've seen this book done so many different ways. But one of the biggest ways is add anything the tactile supports so your students can touch and feel and be able to comprehend a little bit better. >> For hearing impairments, one of the most common and effective solutions is the use of visual supports. Those visual supports could be used through graphic programs like board maker which we will go over. Or just by simply adding picture symbols or real photography that could demonstrate content within the book. So for these obviously, the sentences and pictures have been blown up but there are also the picture symbols that emphasize what is talked about on the page. So here it's the one but for this one there is a peck for every word on the page. Format for impairments. You can laminate pages individually for easier manipulation. You can add corner tabs for easier turning like here. Obviously done with popsicle sticks. Super easy. Adding tactile materials to add to the pictures. And making electronic books that allow easier manipulation that will give better access to the book. For students with cognitive impairments. Many if not all the topics will help as well as using graphic supports for that as well. So AT assessments and evaluations is our next session. So in this session after viewing different assessment protocols and learning about the AT evaluation cycle for them. Students think of an individual they personally know and they brain storm assistive technology that may be useful to them. They are challenged to think about which AT they want to trial. How date at that would be collected and what would happen if device abandonment occurs. When we talk about fight fitting a student of assistive technology, how can assistive technology devices and services enable a student to receive a free and appropriate public education? >> How can assistive tech knowledge device and services enable the student to receive an education in the least restrictive environment? >> How can assistive technology device and services enable the student to access the general curriculum and successfully achieve IEP goals and short-term objectives? >> How do the features of the device match the needs and strengths of the student? And how can the use of the device and services be monitored to ensure successful implementation and benefit to the student? >> These are things that IT members are thinking about when they are fitting a student for assistive technology and something we challenge our students to think about in this session assessment to really apply their learning and see what they've learned. >> So our next session is augmentative and alternative communication or aac. In students learn about different levels of aac devices. Our primary course that is take this session are special education may jurors at the undergraduate level and speech, language may jurors at the graduate level. So throughout the sessions students explore aac devices in apps that are used as aac devices. And then they share what they've learned from this session. And a reflex piece at the end, how are they applying it? And they are able to submit a question to us. Anything about assistive technology or the session itself and then we are able to answer it for them. So if you take a look at this slide we have six quotes for people with communication needs from our research study. So our quotes are I wish I could walk and talk like my brother and sister. I wish everyone would give me enough time to say what I'm thinking. I wish my friends would have more patience with me. I wish adults would stop shouting at me like I can't hear. I wish my friend would joke with me. And I wish my teacher would call on me for share day. So take a moment to think about their wishes. With the help of education about AAC devices we can work toward inclusiveness. And we mean being accepted, having people in both the home and school setting care enough to give the time and make the effort to make sure everyone is included in a way that feels and is valid. So in our session we do want students to understand that when we think about AC we are thinking about aided devices which is something in addition to our body. So a physical device or unaided device which is sign language, gestures, any type of communication that only uses the body. AAC devices which follow the same categorization of other AT items of low, mid and high tech. So that low tech, simple add on devices, not electronic. Sometimes hand made. The mid tech devices, battery operated. And then high tech, expensive, full communication equipment. So we have some examples here. So low tech. That could really just be a simple board maker board. That is laminated and my students pointing to it because they need a little bit of help to help me understand what they are trying to say. But when you are putting that board maker board or laminated board into a go talk then it becomes a mid tech device. But when it's just the board by itself we are talking low tech. Mid tech, so there are some digitized voice operation systems that allow recording of a voice, language or sound. They have limited amount of space for recording storage. And individuals that typically use these types of AAC are beginning communicate fors. Individual that need situation specific vocabulary so that could be I need it for a field trip. Or I need it for art class. And then individuals that need to supplement their own communication system. And then high tech. We have a few different categories in the high tech. So we are talking the first category is the dynamic display system. So these types of systems have RA lot of options in them. They could be big tour and or text based and the vocabulary could be set or grow as the learner uses more vocabulary. So when you are using the high tech devices, the devices are typically meant to grow with the student so the student does not grow out of them. And we have iconic decoding devices and it allows sequences together to make word. The >> The picture support for academics communication and behavior. This session was previously focussed on the board maker software. And was redone by us this summer. To become a broader graphic tech support session. For the session assessment we have different scenarios based on student majors to choose from and create a picture support board. These scenarios include special education, physical education, occupational therapy and learning. So the four main programs we talk about in this session are the pictoscom app. A free app through Google play and apple store. The app is a communication system that is widely used by speech therapists and operates using the exchange of images or picto grams. They could be used with drawings software or free software on the Internet. The software detects the language used by your tablet and will work in either English or French. And there is pictoselector. A free downloadable software compatible for all computers and offers a large variety of picture exchange communication symbols in a number of different languages. Sit completely free to users and is an awesome tool for teachers and parents to begin creating visual supports. The software also allows for everything to be printed and saved which is rare for a software that is completely free. Then there is the ARASAAC software. Or the this is the software that we have our students use for our session assessment and well demo that in a little bit. It offers graphic and material resources, shared with the creative commons license to facilitate communication and cognitive accessibility to all people that present serious difficulties in different communication areas. The program offers pics in color and in black and white. You can search pics based on certain categories and the really cool thing is they offer sign language videos that could be counsel loaded and used on an ipad or computer when needed. And we still do talk about board maker in our session. So board maker is an online software that HAUS thousands of pics to be inserted in different templates to create vision board and so much more. A great tool for teachers and other professionals when beginning to create new visual supports in and out of the classroom. We no longer use it as a hands on activity within the session because it was becoming more difficult for students to create free accounts and use the tools to create a customized picture support board. But students are able to come into the campus lab and use our board maker CD's for their assignments. >> So we are going to go on to the ARASAAC software. So when you first come to the software this is what it looks like. You can just search picto GRSHG rams here. What we will focus on are -- pictgrams. If you have an account made you can save and print all of your work and this is where it would be. You can make animations and symbols and phrases. Just by drawing or inserting pictures. Taylor, I think I need to interrupt you. I think we are going over time. And so let's go ahead and stop that demonstration there. I do want to go ahead and quickly go to the impact slide before everybody signs off. So you can kind of see the impact that we are having here at ECU. Let's go to the next -- Tiffany, do you want to go ahead with that. Yes, I can. The Irene Howell assistive technology center has had a large impact on the students on our campus. Our average enrollment for professional development sessions during the fall and spring semesters is between 600 and 800 students each semester and about 300 to 400 during each of our short summer terms. And we award over 2,000 certificates every year to students. Some of which do it to complete class requirements, some do it for their personal professional growth and some do it because they've done one and they want to do all of them. So they can say they've done all of them. So we have a lab located in the state building on our campus and students can come in and complete their professional development modules. They can work with aassistive technology. They can ask questions about assistive technology and purposes and use the assistive technologies for their classes, Internet settings or personal interests. We are able to reach professors and students and grow their knowledge of assistive technology and allow them to go into the world and share their knowledge and use it to assist others. >> So this is our numbers from fall 2017 up until currently. So just to go over it from fall 2017 to summer 2018 we awarded 2341 certificates. Fall 2018 to summer 2019 we awarded 2636 certificates. And fall 2019 to summer 2020 we awarded 2746 certificates. So as you can see our numbers are constantly increasing which means we are reaching more and more students and making more of an impact on ecu's campus and hopefully in the communities that these students go out to to and begin to work in. So like I -- like you've heard from all of our sessions we have nine certificate that is are given out. One for each of the sessions that you've heard about from me and Taylor. And a lot of students are awarded multiple certificates within one semester. It's usually because of various classes have requirements. Or like I said, they do one and like to do all of them. These are a great thing to put on their resumes and use in the future because they have knowledge how to make curriculum school environments and noneducational opportunities more accessible for all people. If you don't mind going to the next one? >> We just wanted to quickly share with you some quotes from students who have taken IHAT sessions. The first one says the AT sessions were a great way to be introduce today a wide variety of AT tools. Thing that helped me the most was actually get to go manipulate the software and use it instead of just reading about it. When I think of the AT professional development series, I get weak Knees. It was so much work at the time. However, I have learned so much from these sessions. What helped me about these sessions the most was being made to do them. I probably wouldn't have done them on my own but I am glad they were mandatory. This person says, I am an intending nursing major. I feel if I were to have a patient with a disability I would be able to help and understand more. I think everybody should be made more aware of ways to help individuals with disabilities and find ways to effectively communicate with each other. I have enjoyed this module. And the last one says, I'm an English major pursuing the 5th year teaching degree in the state of North Carolina and this session has been informative and eye opening to all. Possible differentiations that could be happening. But also the ones that need to be happening. It is so common that teachers put all students into one box. Well, it's not one size fits all. It's important for us to understand the benefits to differentiation and how we can utilize our resources to benefit the educational foundation of our students and their futures. >> There are other online modules about assistive technology that I think most of us are aware of. Our strengths here at the IHAT center is that we are engaging students and giving them hands on experience with assistive technology embedded in the sessions and available through our lab itself by checking it out. We are proud of the fact that the college of education majors, not just special education majors, and more graduate with a basic foundation of assistive technology and universal design for learning. If you go to the next one. If anyone had any questions for Dr. King, Taylor or I you are welcome to ask. And I know we are over time. I definitely encourage to you go ahead and email either me or the students, if you have questions in our at center email as well. We are proud of what we do. It is really reaching far beyond special education majors which I think is the most critical thing. Our hands on piece is what makes us unique. >> I appreciate you guys sharing your information. I mean so many ideas were coming through and I hinge you can see by the chat people are very impressed. It speaks to me as -- I just wish that we all had it as a general education course. Right for everyone. They could -- students -- you are doing that, but I don't know -- is it established as a general education course that students can take? There? >> No -- >> The -- the IHAT sessions are separate with the lab and he bedded in a number of courses. When they register all of those classes are automatically dumped into our con advice site so we have about 800 students in there and they complete whatever sessions they want. So it is a great for profess source. Wonderful for us. That is nice. Do others have questions? >> I know we don't have a lot of time but I was really interested in the books that you guys made adaptations to and I remember doing that in a college course in 2001 and I think it's super valuable. And I was wondering -- you guys are the front-runners of having virtual activities already kind of enhanced and going. And when I was looking at your tactile books I wondered if you've thought of any clever way of approaching like -- if you are working with someone with low vision. I was looking at those books that students had made and wondering how you can translate that to a virtual world or if that's kind of -- I mean it's difficult, but I wondered if you had any ideas. I'm not quite understanding the question, but for our activities in the sessions we do allow the students to use students they are working with in practicum settings so they are getting a good alignment what needs to be done for that. For the adaptive book assessment there are two options. When we taught in our face to face class that was one of the most popular sessions because students did enjoy coming in and using the materials and making things. So we retained that so that students can adapt their own book. And if they didn't want to do that then we had scenarios where you could explain if you have a student with this specific disability how would you adapt it. Did that help? >> Yeah, I think just having the different options of activities. That clarifies. Thanks Dr. King. Are you raising your hand? >> Yeah, when we do classes we have a raise our hand button. I think to add on to what Dr. King said, one thing that Taylor and I have seen while grading is students who are doing our second option which is creating like actually creating the adaptive books for students who have visual impairments or maybe blind, a lot of students will have the book simplified and have the pictures bigger. And they will add video recordings or audio clips of them reading the book out. So all they have to do is click the speaker button at the top and it read the page to them. I don't know about Taylor, Dr. King, but that's one I seen while grading it and I think it is a great option because that's something you can use year after year because you are reading it the same. >> Absolutely. That's a great way to approach. Because it's difficult to translate some of these accommodations and great ideas to a virtual format but that's fantastic way. Thanks. Are there any other questions? >> Okay. Please feel free to email us if you do have questions or want to hear more about how we have this facilitated. I can't Thank you enough for inviting us to join you. >> Thank you. We would love to get more information how you facilitate it and how we could possibly do some of that. Share some of your work. So Thank you very much. Thank you. Bye everyone. Thank you.