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Making AT Easy: What’s Your AT Vision?

04 Mar 2014 / Comments Off / in Blog Posts & Articles, Making AT Easy, Newsletters/by

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One thing you can do today

We get it — driving changes in a school district can seem impossible. Yet, this is what’s expected with the policy, assessment, and curriculum shifts you’re facing now.

So let’s take it one step at a time and start with your vision. What change do you want to see take place as a result of successful implementation?

Your vision is critical to your success because it will act as your guiding point and filter for everything you do to implement change.

Let’s get started…

To write a clear and concise vision statement, you will need:

  • A specific long-term outcome, based on a current deficit you identify in your students
  • Alignment with a larger district mission or initiative
  • A deadline
  • Indicators of success

Need some help putting your thoughts together? Try filling in the following example of a vision statement to get started:

Students who are (describe current deficit) will (achieve desired improvement) by (deadline). Progress will be noticeable by (indicators of success).

This Making AT Easy idea was originally featured on ATcollective, your place to come together as a community to share new ideas and ask questions about AT implementation, screening, and more. Join the conversation!

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Making AT Easy: Building Capacity with New Questions

28 Jan 2014 / Comments Off / in Blog Posts & Articles, Making AT Easy, Newsletters/by

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One Thing You Can Do Today

Do you ever feel like you have “AT Expert” tattooed on your forehead? Especially when “AT” comes up on a student’s IEP?

There’s something about that question that causes a moment of panic—and heads turn your way.

By building capacity, you can ensure that your special ed teachers become comfortable with the AT process and stave off that moment of panic.

But…How?

One idea that works is to shift your role from being the “expert” to being a “coach”.

How? Start by asking questions first — before you deliver your list of ideas.

    • If there was an ideal accommodation for this student, what might it look like? What features would it have?
    • If we tried this tool, how do you think it would go? What would be the challenges? What steps should we take to ensure success in a trial of this tool?
    • What would you need to do to make it work?

This Making AT Easy idea was originally featured on ATcollective, your place to come together as a community to share new ideas and ask questions about AT implementation, screening, and more. Join the conversation!

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Making AT Easy: Get Started With Your Implementation Plan!

11 Oct 2013 / Comments Off / in Blog Posts & Articles, Making AT Easy, Newsletters/by

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Implementation — one step at a time

New school year. New teams. New technology to learn and implement. We get it — change is hard and there are a lot of people who may not like it.

But don’t give up! That is where SHIFT can help. We broke down our implementation framework into small, manageable chunks that you can introduce to your team without overwhelming them.

All it takes to get started is a vision — think of something concrete that you want your team to accomplish by a specific date. Sara, one of our friends in Colorado, downloaded her SHIFT kit and got right to work. She even shared her goals with us on ATcollective! Are you ready to get started?

This Making AT Easy idea was originally featured on ATcollective, your place to come together as a community to share new ideas and ask questions about AT implementation, screening, and more. Join the conversation!

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SHIFT: Part 3 – Designing and Delivering Training

22 Jun 2011 / Comments Off / in Around the Community, Blog Posts & Articles/by

by Mary Jo Barry

TimeI’m pretty sure Mick Jagger was incorrect when he told us that time was on our side. In fact, I’m positive time is not on your side when it comes to learning new technology at school, in the midst of your typical work day.

Thus, lack of time is the number one barrier keeping you from effectively leading and teaching your staff and students to use new technology. Uncovering and leveraging times that already exist will probably become your greatest task–you’re going to have to get creative! We often hear that reserving school or district PD days is not available to you. Here’s the thing, even if PD days are an option, they’re rarely frequent enough to create a sustainable learning environment. You cannot hold a training and come back in six months for a follow up and expect that things have changed.

There’s a paradigm shift to be made here too that nobody likes to talk about, it’s a bit taboo…at some point you will need to get people to understand and agree that learning new technology is not an extra thing. The ability to use and leverage technology is a minimal expectation in the working world, and has been for more than a decade.

If we want our students to be competitive in the digital, global economy we live in, this belief system has to start, or at the very least be reflected, in our schools. Once your staff begins to experience using technology in context (regularly), they will discover that it will replace other things they’re doing, and it can help them do some things more quickly. For many administrators and classroom teachers, this is a big hump to get over. Getting past this will also get you past that mind-set that many staff members have, “I should be getting paid for learning this.”

So, with that out in the open, let’s move on to strategies that will help you push your trainings out more effectively!

Districts that have excelled at implementation have offered up several common time-slot suggestions: planning periods, before/after school and lunchtimes. Remember that food is a great motivator—make snacks or treats! A brown-bag luncheon where everyone brings their lunch and eats together works really well too. These meeting times should be static and need to occur every couple of weeks at first. Maybe you’re thinking that these short bits of time are not long enough to deliver enough information—au contraire mon fraire—start thinking mini-lessons!

Developing Your Training Materials and Content

The biggest mistake made in developing the content to be covered in actual trainings and workshops is that the trainer provides way too much information at one time. The other is that trainers tend to lead with the technology and not the student outcome. If you are involved in AT, chances are you are slightly more tech-savvy than some of your peers—so remember that!

We get excited about what a technology can do, and we often go in guns blazing showing off every single bell and whistle. The reason we do this is because we’re afraid we’re not going to get another time with the people who attend. If you want to have the greatest possible impact, you’ll have to stop doing and thinking this way. Here’s a tip sheet called, “How to Create Custom PD Training Modules”. It contains some foolproof ways to create fabulous training modules! Plus, it will suggest more resources that you can get on our web site!

Find Your Bright Spots

Somewhere in your district, technology is working well—your job is to discover why. Even if it’s only one classroom in one building, follow these steps to leverage that bright spot:

  • Gather data on what IS working
  • Understand the normal way things are done
  • Find out what’s being done differently
  • REPRODUCE what’s working in your plan

If you haven’t already, sign up to become a SHIFT Member! It’s free, and you’ll not only get a great starter kit that contains tools to help you create a fool-proof plan that you can roll out this fall, but also lots of extras, like certificates of achievement, data collection sheets, student success forms, etc.

Happy training! Don’t forget to post your successes on this blog so that others can benefit from your learning!

SHIFT: Part 2 – Building Your AT Implementation Team

26 May 2011 / Comments Off / in Around the Community, Blog Posts & Articles/by

by Mary Jo Barry

mary_joHow are you doing communicating your vision for pushing out your assistive technology and getting people on board? Have you created a team to help you?

Here is the most important reason for creating teams: Your goal is to move away from that old “you are the expert model” and make “more YOUs” at each location (where the technology is being placed)! While your effectiveness does hinge a little bit on how you carry out your training, the bulk of successful implementation really lies in the team(s) you create. The Team Builder Tool on our web site will walk you through each step and will outline how to identify the types of people and personalities you’ll need to build a phenomenal team.

SHIFT_2_TeamFirst things first, you’re actually going to need two teams, the first one being your stakeholders, probably your peers or your administrators. They’re the ones who, if you can get their “nod,” will help you with infrastructure and accountability.

The second will be your team of doers: those are the folks that will actually assist you in doing training and will be actively involved in pushing the technology out. In the Build Your Team section of our web site, we teach you how to identify and go with the goers!

A couple more key things about putting your team together: make being on the team a prestigious thing and validate the team’s existence by naming it. A little intrinsic motivation goes a long way! If you make the people on your team feel special, they will act special.

There are lots of ways to do this:

  • Send a letter to their administrator, letting the administrator know why this person was selected (there is a sample letter in your kit!)
  • Put a “Making SHIFT Happen” certificate or sign outside their door
  • List the team name in your district newsletter, announcing your team members
  • The more you generate awareness about your team, the more you’ll breed excitement about being on the team.

One last thing, make sure you carve out a regular meeting time for your team—at least once a month. You don’t need a big chunk of time—one hour should do it, so think about planning periods or lunch times. Always make this meeting a positive experience. For example, at the opening of each meeting have each member of your team share a success they’ve had with a student, or explain how they overcame a barrier. If you can, keep your team from talking about all of the negatives and keep them focused on the finish line. It will also provide a platform for leveraging each other’s ideas. Additionally, when you use this meeting method you can gauge which members are “stuck” or aren’t participating as you had hoped. They probably won’t bring much to the table during this time. With that information you can perform an intervention.

I know it’s almost the end of the year but if you start planning now, you can come back in the fall with a foolproof plan!

SHIFT: Part 1 – Creating Your Vision

06 Apr 2011 / Comments Off / in Around the Community, Blog Posts & Articles/by

by Mary Jo Barry

mj2Technology Implementation: How difficult is it for you? Do you know the steps to effect change? Did you know there are some predictable patterns to follow? Are you familiar with this kind of scenario in your school?

You’re really excited because you just launched a new widespread AT initiative, but only a few folks show up. You promote it and shout it out that CHANGE is in the air, but your colleagues aren’t as excited as you are.

You think… “Can’t they see the impact AT has on our students…Johnny wrote his first paragraph just the other day and his reading has improved.” What’s it going to take to ensure effective implementation happens?

We’ve merged the implementation strategies we’ve seen successful districts use, with some simple change principles we’ve learned in reading Chip and Dan Heath’s book Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard to create SHIFT.

It starts with a Vision…

Woman_w_diagram_iStock_000013746771XSmallHaving a vision is critical because it acts as the guiding point and filter for everything you do. It should have a specific long-term outcome and should also support, or be inline with any bigger district mission or initiatives. Check out our Vision Builder Tool, a worksheet that will walk you through the steps to creating a good, achievable vision.

Even more important than the act of creating your vision statement, is how you will go about communicating that vision to get others on-board! Communicating your vision in a way that resonates with people works wonders.

To help get you thinking about how to creatively communicate your vision, we also posted the Marketing Your Vision 101 Tool.

In Marketing Your Vision 101, we expound on these five effective strategies:

  1. Bring a student to your meeting and let them explain how technology helps them
  2. Video-record a struggling reader or writer being successful
  3. Bring before-and-after writing samples of your students
  4. Take your naysayers to see students using technology
  5. Tell break-through or miracle stories

If you invent some other creative ways to communicate your vision, why not share that out with others who are “SHIFT”ing too?

Comment here, on Facebook, or Twitter!

New AT Approaches – What Would You Do Differently?

22 Feb 2011 / Comments Off / in Around the Community, Blog Posts & Articles/by

by Gayl Bowser

GailLike Don Johnston, I’ve had the good fortune to work in many countries and cultures in my retirement. I’ve been to schools in Mexico, Ecuador and Taiwan and the good news is that assistive technology is beginning to grow in those countries too!

Just knowing about how other schools are building their emerging AT systems can teach us a lot about how we might want to make changes in the US to benefit more kids.

When I get to experience other cultures using AT for the first time, I ask myself the question that Don often asks us, “Knowing what we know now, what would we change or do differently in our schools?”

One thought I have is that I might take some “specialness” out of AT. After all, we know that technology that works for children with special needs will also support lots of learners and learning styles.

When I started working with AT devices 25 years ago, they were all so customized and only used by specialists in hospitals and clinics; settings that were isolated from schools. Later, we built systems in schools to address the needs of students with disabilities, but they were separate and parallel to general education technology tools. Looking back, these systems were based on a model that implied that we needed an expert to support AT. Once we got into this specialized role, it’s been difficult to get out.

Today, as a consultant traveling the world, I try to help others more easily understand how to use AT in daily learning environments and to showcase many tools that we can consider as general education learning tools. So, I ask you….would you consider the possibility of moving away from being an expert consultant or specialist to becoming an education mentor or technology coach?

If I were to start over, I might find ways to empower all educators to make their own technology decisions. I would help them to develop a curiosity to try various technologies before they call on experts. Yes, we will always need individuals with expert knowledge and specialized expertise when our knowledge is insufficient, but, could we give up some of our “specialness” in favor of an overarching empowerment of all colleagues? I’m ready to change my perception, are you?

To SHIFT our approach to integrated school technology systems, we would then expect that every educator, grad student or new teacher would understand how classroom technology accommodations benefit students. If we are teaching elementary education, do we use digital textbooks, talking word processors and alternative reading materials? If we are teaching older students, are we aware that mobile phones now offer word prediction and voice recognition features that might be useful in our instruction? If we are pre-grad students attending teaching colleges and universities, are we taught to use assistive technology in our delivery of instruction? Can we fully integrate technology into our daily teaching routines? If not, where do go for help and resources?

Tell us what you think? If you had the chance to start again with AT, what would you do differently? What resources and information do you tap into to learn more about these tools?

Special thanks to Gayl Bowser, AT Expert and Consultant for this thoughtful guest blog post.

SHIFT…Shaping Habits in Fellow Teachers

02 Nov 2010 / Comments Off / in Blog Posts & Articles, Company News, Product News/by

by Valerie Chernek

Last week, Bill Reeder, former Director of Fairfax County VA Public Schools, AT Department, prompted us with questions about the assumptions we often make using technology and a few excuses we hear from those who don’t want to use these tools.

It’s hard to make changes. Most folks don’t like it. Since our video released, ‘The Case Against Assistive Technology’, we’ve heard from lots of you and hope you will keep the momentum going and the discussion alive…it’s an important one.

What we know from your comments and guest blogs is that CHANGE can happen! It all starts with a ‘SHIFT‘ in thinking. And, of course a ‘CHAMPION‘ of an idea…i.e. that technology can add more learning support for students with special needs and this can have a big impact.

That CHAMPION could be you, a teacher, a student who knows how to make things work…like computers and software or a principal or administrator. Whoever it is…acknowledge them … reward them … and recognize their efforts. Everyone likes to be recognized for their good works!

Shift-logoHelping students with disabilities reach their true learning potential and overcome common barriers to learning is such a worthy mission. Yes, you are shaking your heads in confirmation. That’s why we developed SHIFT!

Our new AT Implementation Framework, affectionately dubbed ‘SHIFT‘, for shaping habits in fellow teachers can help you create a vision, build your team, design and deliver training and keep the momentum going. And it’s FREE!

We designed this professional development program after working with AT specialists and administrators from across America who visited our headquarters to participate in our learning summits.

These folks know what it takes to make change happen in their urban and rural school districts and how to address different types of students’ needs. For the last few years, we tested our theories, gathered best practices, put teams together and helped many educators successfully build their AT infrastructure.

Now we can help you…Take the Challenge with SHIFT!

We believe, as we know you do too, that ordinary people can achieve extraordinary results. Check out our new SHIFT professional development program and all the great resources and materials available.

Don’t forget to use the video ‘The Case Against AT’ as a presentation resource. It’s really a great tool for opening up new discussion and to start the ball rolling.

Thanks for staying with us, talking about change, and sharing our new SHIFT professional development program.

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