Technology for Special Education Students

As a future Special Education teacher with a lack of interest for technology, I've always had this misconception about using technology with special needs kids. With a focus in learning disabilities, I find it hard at times to think of ways to incorporate technology into the curriculum and even in every day lessons and activities. I may also come across an activity but will shortly become concerned that it may be too difficult for these students to accomplish and will not accommodate to their needs. So, I decided to search for state Special Education standards with technology and stumbled upon a page that gave quick facts about Special Education and new technologies that are created specifically for these students. A link to this website is linked below.

http://www.masters-in-special-education.com/technology/

This page was very informative, to me especially, and I learned about some amazing new devices and programs that were created for these kids in mind. Some of the facts and statistics that I learned from this page was that 7 million students in public schools across the U.S. are in Special Education programs and these programs have increased by 30% in the past decade. This page also conveniently broke down the percentages of specific disabilities students have, with learning disabilities claiming the largest portion with 51% of students, and speech or language impairments leading in at 21%. Because of the steadily increasing amount of special needs students, the amount of technologies geared for this audience has increased as well. These devices are simply fascinating and make learning much more feasible for students. One of these devices or programs is called Nova Chat, a program made for students with reading disabilities. This device is able to read text aloud and speech can be converted to text. These devices are quite expensive and require multiple sources of funding for schools to claim them. Fortunately, there is funding for these technologies and support will continue to be given as long as this program is needed.