Engagement and Activity-based Learning technologies are important in advancing pedagogy.

But which technologies are available for use by special needs students and how can I as a teacher ensure maximum benefit for my students?

Student Response Systems, Interactive Whiteboards and Displays, Tablets/Slates, Interactive Pen Displays, Visualisers, Smartpens, Robotics, Podcasting are all technologies to enhance engagement and learning.

The use of technology can often stimulate interest, engagement, cognitive thinking and active participation to help develop learning skills and increased understanding.

Student Response Systems (SRS) are ideal for engaging students and providing quality feedback to teachers.

SRS are at the pinnacle of student engagement technologies and are the ideal “everyday“Â� technology tool for engaging and developing special needs students.

The TurningPoint Student Response System offers several input mediums to involve students with disabilities or learning difficulties in a school context, including keypads and web enabled devices such as smart phones, iPod touch devices and computers and notebooks. Students can be physically present or engaged remotely. In addition to the increased engagement, educators will receive important real time feedback on understanding levels, opinions, pace of learning etc. Further, and as important, educators will receive continuous data collection for analysis to allow practical early intervention for at risk students.

New data analysis software provides school and system wide monitoring to enable teachers and administrators to easily identify students who are at risk of falling behind. These tools facilitate teacher collaboration and the monitoring and benchmarking of various teaching methodologies.

Using eBeam portable interactive whiteboard and tablet technology, the session will demonstrate pre-prepared lesson plans and impromptu teaching approaches that have been found to work in a number of school settings involving students with special needs. Students can actively view and contribute to the eBeam Interactive workspace session from their computer whether physically in class or remotely. The eBeam tablet will allow a student to control the interactive whiteboard from anywhere in the class. eBeam IWB software loaded on an interactive LCD or LED displays are ideal for use by students in wheelchairs, visually impaired and movement restricted students.

Technology can also enhance student lifestyles by increasing learning times whilst decreasing travel time and costs without sacrificing social interaction. This will be an important trend as enormous savings can be directed towards improved teaching outcomes via the use of technology.

The Livescribe Digital PulsePen is an ideal note taking solution for students with special needs. It records handwritten notes in digital format and bookmarks these notes to the audio for easy replaying and revision.

Peter will also demonstrate the IPD’s, Visualisers, Robotics and podcasting technologies.