"Toolbelt Theory" suggests that we must teach our students how to analyze tasks, the task-completion environment, their own skills and capabilities, an appropriate range of available tools… and let them begin to make their own decisions
• Break the dependence cycle
• Develop lifespan technology skills
• Limit limitations
• Empower student decision making
• Prepare students for life beyond school
Task
1. What needs to be done? (when possible, break the task down into component parts)
Environment
1. Where must this be done (or is typically done)?
2. Under what time constraints?
3. What is the standard method of task completion?
4. How does the person with the disability interact within this environment?
5. Who is the task being done for? (specifics of teacher, employer, other expectations)
Skills
1. What specific strengths does the person with the disability bring to this task?
2. What specific weaknesses interfere with that person's ability to complete the task?
3. What is that person's "tool acquisition aptitude" and what tools are they currently comfortable with?
Tools
1. What tool best "bridges the gap" between the current skill set and what is needed for task completion?
2. If the tool is not already "in the toolbox" (the person has been successfully trained in its use), how does the environmental timeline match with the needed learning curve?
3. If it is not possible to use the "best tool" within this environment what is the "back-up tool"? How do we pre-train so the best tool can be used the next time?
But, we cannot just implement this in our schools right now, because our schools are unprepared. Essential things must be in place to do this effectively:
• Up to date technology
• Schools can not continue to prepare students to use 20th Century technology
• They must be preparing students to use the technology that will be around in the next decade.
Start by asking: is the technology in your school…
• Up to that used in most major retail stores?
• Up to that used in most offices?
• Ubiquitous technology
• Specialized technology is always more expensive, and more difficult to use “everywhere”
• The mobile phone, the PocketPC, Google-based solutions, Microsoft-based solutions, Firefox-based solutions, are less expensive and everywhere at the start.
This is just like the tale of those horrible old cassette players Telex made for RFBD (US:
Start by asking: Does your school…
• Ban mobile phones?
• Ban mp3 players even when students are working individually?
• Have all available free Assistive Technology installed on all computers?
Why is school, especially in the
• Choices of hardware and software readily available
• Students must make their own selections and learn how to evaluate
• Start small at young ages, and move up to discovering the world
Why are you forcing your students to use one absurd, antiquated, non-ergonomic keyboard when there, literally, thousands of choices available – couldn't you have at least a dozen different ones in your school building?
Start by asking: Does your school…
• Have various keyboards and mice for students to choose from?
• Have more than one form of literacy technology?
• Encourage a choice of calculators?
• Willingness to allow failure
• Without failure there is very little learning.
• Make failure “low cost” – learn from the world of video games
• Failure now beats failure later.
Start by asking: Does your school…
• Encourage all students to try differing methods of reading?
• Of writing?
• Have assessment method choices?
• Allow choices of seating?
• Instructional tolerance
• Accepting loss of classroom control
• Accepting that all students will learn their own ways to do things
• Emphasizing “what” instead of “how”
Start by asking: Does it matter…
• “how” a book is “read”?
• “how” a paper is “written”?
• “how” a student “gets to” a math answer if the concept is understood?
Does your school…
• Privilege methods?
Does anyone in your school ever ask a student…
• “What if the computer breaks?”
• “What if the power goes out?”
School often begins with being told that we are "making [our] fives wrong" and ends with being told that our "citations are wrong." In neither case are we necessarily being incomprehensible – the teacher knows that it is a five and knows where the citation is from, but they are only interested in style, not content. (Oh, and the answer to the "computer breaks" question is, "what if your pencil breaks, what if your pen runs out of ink?")
A student with math issues might require just his mobile phone calculator for work and a downloadable computer graphing calculator for homework, but may need to know to transfer data that he cannot write accurately from the teacher's calculator if that teacher distrusts the technology or suspects cheating whenever high-tech gadgets appear.
Data-Based Decision-Making: In tracking task success students can learn to look at direct results (improved test scores), indirect results (less time required for task completion), and affective indicators (improvements in mood, self-image, stress levels). Students need to be taught that all of these things matter, and will determine what assistive devices they use in the same way it determines their choice of mobile phone or mp3 player.
• Contemporary technology
• Ubiquitous technology
• A view to the future
• Student choice
• “Method Freedom” instead of “Method Privilege”
• Low cost of failure
• Universal design (non-“prescriptive”)
-Ira Socol from Los Angeles
2 comments:
This is really great stuff. It's 'teach a man to fish,' with acronyms and cognitive theory. But really, it's a kind of activism... The underlying assumption is that the 'disabled' shouldn't be pity magnets.
Plus I now want an iFrogpad. :-)
--htb
I'm way behind on reading this but you have hit on a couple of really important issues-one that schools don't trust the kids (do they even like them??) and the "americanization" of education. I think alone is a far bigger issue than anyone wants to admit or even acknowledge. why does everything have to be such a big struggle?
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