I found this article, whose full title is THE USE OF MOBILE TECHNOLOGIES TO ASSIST WITH LIFE SKILLS/INDEPENDENCE OF STUDENTS WITH MODERATE/SEVERE INTELLECTUAL DISABILITY AND/OR AUTISM SPECTRUM DISORDERS: CONSIDERATIONS FOR THE FUTURE OF SCHOOL PSYCHOLOGY (Ayres, K., Mechling, L., Sansosti, F., 2013) , and I thought it would be interesting to know more about what new technologies can do for education and specially for the support of children with disabilities.
I will summarize the article and give a few of my opinions, but I also linked the pdf so you can have access to the full reading, which I found using the google scholar and through the page https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com.
The article focuses on the roles of new technologies to improve independence and productivity in kids with moderate/severe intellectual disability and/or autism spectrum disorders (MSID/ASD).
Technologies can be divided in: instructional technologies and assistive technologies, where the first one is used to teach skills and the second one plays an ongoing role of support to the individual.
In the range of instructional technologies, many studies have examined how videos through mobile devices can help MSID/AID students to follow instructions in an easy and independent manner, because they have the liberty to take their time, rewind the video, etc. things they wouldn't be able to do with an in vivo explanation given by an instructor. Another important advantatge is that different professors and members of the family could show them they same video and they would learn at home and at school with the exacte same model, increasing procedural fidelity and learning.
Moreover, mobile technologies also can help improving the self-determination of the MSID/ASD student, because it has ways to promote self-management and self-instruction. features of self-determination. With an available portable technology with them, they are able to, on their own, search for the answers to a problem (like for example how to cook an egg), instead of having to ask someone. And with only one device, they have access to many answers. It's also a very good way to improve socializing, with text messages or social media.
Of course, to be able to use technology they have to be taught HOW to use it. That presents its own problems, because it means that the teachers or psychologist must know how to use them and how to teach to use them, and with the rapid growth of technology sometimes its proven difficult to be at date.
So, to successfully use technologies in education, it's important to have in mind the strengths and weaknessess of the students, and which technologies are available. But new technologies have, in general, a very positive effect, and studies to date show more advantatges than disadvanatges in using them.
This concludes the summary of the article. In my opinion, it gives some very interesting ideas about how to use new technologies to help MSID/ASD students, because we always hear talking about technologies helping education as a whole, but we keep forgetting that they can be a very important support to students with disabilities, if used correctly, to archieve the same goals as students without disabilities, or to at least improve their self-determination, which I personally think it's a very important part of every person, because no matter how many skills one has, if you don't believe in yourself you will never put them to work, you will never fully reach your capacity.
I think it's worth to keep on studying the uses and misuses of technology, to help improve education, and to give some assistance in life to MSID/ASD students.
With this, I conclude the explanation of new technologies in supporting students with MSID/ASD. I hope it's given some of the people who read it interesting ideas to work with, or at least something to think about.
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