Special Education for Beginners | Managing Paraprofessionals, Special Education Strategies, First Year Sped Teachers, Special Ed Overwhelm, Paperwork for Special Education Teachers

A Guide to Implementing Assistive Technology Practices

• Episode 203

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In this final installment of our series on assistive technology (AT), I want to provide you with a way to effectively plan and implement AT within your IEPs. This episode provides educators with a comprehensive toolkit designed to ensure that all students have the tools they need to succeed and gain independence in their learning environments.

What You'll Learn:

  • How to effectively integrate assistive technology into IEPs.
  • Strategies for involving all stakeholders in the AT planning process.
  • An overview of the Assistive Technology Toolkit, including input forms and planning guides.
  • Success stories demonstrating the transformative impact of assistive technology on student independence and learning.

Featured in This Episode:

  • The Assistive Technology Toolkit: An essential resource for educators, including student, family, and teacher input forms; an evaluation & planning guide; and a resource ring with over 600 AT solutions.

The toolkit includes an Evaluation, Input Forms, Planning Guide & a Data Tracking form as well as a 65 card resource ring and digital input forms for students, families and teachers.

  • Success Story: Hear about Emily, a student who found new independence through the use of a calculator, illustrating the profound impact of tailored assistive technology solutions.

Resources Mentioned:

  • Assistive Technology Toolkit: Available for purchase on the Sped Prep Academy Teachers Pay Teachers store. Remember, if you’re on our email list, watch your inbox for a special deal on this toolkit!
  • Sign Up for Our Newsletter: Get this toolkit at a discount, updates on new episodes, information on sales, and much more by signing up at www.spedprepacademy.com/podcast

Writing individual impact statements based on a student’s unique disability  and needs can be a big struggle AND a big time suck.! And in case you haven't noticed...extra time is not something you have a lot of.

My IEP Impact Statements Growing Bundle will give you  the resources you need to make writing impact statements a breeze.  





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Speaker 1:

Welcome back to another episode of Special Education for Beginners. Today marks the final discussion on assistive technology and I'm thrilled to share a comprehensive resource that will empower you to take everything that we've learned this month and apply it Over the years. At IEP meetings, I often felt solely responsible for suggesting and integrating assistive technology, especially when my students didn't have direct involvement from occupational or physical therapists technology, especially when my students didn't have direct involvement from occupational or physical therapists. My OTs and PTs have always been very good about helping me decide on supports for the student and they would come up with things that I had never heard of. But very often my students didn't have a need for OT or PT and it was at those times when I would find myself checking no on assistive technology boxes when really I should have been checking not sure or uncertain, or give me a little bit of time to figure it out. Today I want to change that narrative for you. I want to share with you how to effectively plan for the AT section of your IEPs and make that process sustainable. Just like Paige said last week, I want to give you the tools to gather input from all stakeholders, how to take that information and write a plan using a resource bank, and I want to empower you to confidently level the playing field for the students on your caseload and find solutions to provide them with the means to participate fully in both academic and non-academic activities and to ultimately help them reach a level of independence, which is the goal right. I also want to share with you a success story to illustrate the transformative impact of well-implemented assistive technology plans. I'm so excited for this episode.

Speaker 1:

Let's get to it. Hey, special educator, are you overwhelmed by the absurd amount of paperwork on your to-do list? Do you wish you had the skills to build a rock-solid team with your staff? Do you find yourself scouring the internet for how to meet the needs of each student on your caseload? Well, hey there. I'm Jennifer Hopperberg, an award-winning veteran special education teacher and current instructional coach, who has walked in your shoes through each of these challenges and yes, I have the metaphorical blisters to prove it. I have cried your tears and felt your pain, and now I'm here to support you in the way I wish someone would have been there to support me. Listen in each week as my guests and I dish out practical wisdom to help you handle all the classroom curveballs that are thrown at you, and learn how to laugh in spite of the chaos, to celebrate those small yet significant victories that only a special educator can understand. So are you ready? Wipe your tears and put on your superhero cape, because together, we are going to learn how to survive and thrive in the ever-crazy, completely overwhelming, laugh-so-you-don't-cry profession of being a special education teacher.

Speaker 1:

So when I first chose assistive technology as the March theme for the 2025 podcast year, I was driven by the desire to create a resource that would provide teachers with a structured flow for implementing AT effectively, because this is something that I wish I would have had when I was in the classroom. But the inspiration for this product grew stronger after discussions with several teachers, who expressed a need for something tangible as well, a tool that could guide them step by step through the entire process. These teachers have a strong desire to do things right, just like I do, and so, motivated by their feedback, I developed the assistive technology toolkit, and the toolkit includes three key components the input forms, the planning guide and evaluation, and the resource bank. So let's start with the input forms. I have included both paper and digital options, but the input forms are exactly what they sound like. They're just forms for gathering input from each team member, and I want you to understand the importance of involving everyone who impacts the student's learning environment, including the student, the family and any teachers that the child has. This can be special education teachers, general education teachers, coaches, music teachers, paraprofessionals Basically, anyone who works with the student can fill out a form. Some of the questions on the forms include areas where the student has seen success, tasks that are difficult for them, goals for the student and suggestions for what could be helpful to aid the student in achieving those tasks. These forms are designed to gather comprehensive insights from all the stakeholders, ensuring a more holistic view of the student's needs and, like I said, you can collect this information digitally or paper pencil, but it's important to have input from everyone.

Speaker 1:

The next piece of the toolkit is the evaluation and planning guide. It starts with an introduction to AT basically everything that we covered in week one and then it is followed by detailed instructions on how to use the evaluation before, during and after the IEP meeting to ensure you are fully prepared at every stage, and then on the evaluation before, during and after the IEP meeting to ensure you are fully prepared at every stage, and then on the evaluation itself. It gives you boxes where you can summarize the data from the input forms and then choose the areas where you want that focus to be. It contains guiding questions to ask at the IEP meeting, such as what tools and strategies will be used to help the student complete the tasks, how will performance be measured and collected, what initial and ongoing support or training is needed, and so on. The questions focus on data, training and facilitation, and then on the planning sheet, you will write the AT supports that were chosen, and then you'll go through a checklist to make sure you are documenting everything correctly within the IEP itself. I've even included a statement to use if no assistive technology is needed, if that's what the decision was. And then the last part of the planning guide are a tracking sheet to monitor the implementation and the effectiveness of the technologies and a two-page tech bank divided by each area of the IEP. And then, finally, the last part of the toolkit is a resource ring.

Speaker 1:

I am big on resource rings. I have them all over my office and I use them daily, and so my hope is that this resource ring will be a benefit to you as well. I have them for accommodations and modifications. I have one for phone numbers, I have one for state testing information. I literally have resource rings all over the place, so I wanted to provide you with something that you could print out on cardstock and then be able to put it on a ring and keep it close to you when you are making decisions and when you're writing those IEPs about assistive technology.

Speaker 1:

This resource ring includes 65 cards on half sheets of paper. There is a reference card that gives kind of a basic understanding of what low-tech, mid-tech and high-tech are and it gives why it's important. And then it also gives benefits and some drawbacks if there's any drawbacks and then it is divided into 11 different sections for reading, math, writing, functional skills, transition, cognitive reading, math, writing, functional skills, transition. Cognitive communication, sensory, health, social, emotional and motor skills. I think I got all 11. And they're all broken down into the different components within that topic.

Speaker 1:

So, for example, let's do reading. For reading, I have a vocabulary card, I have a phonemic awareness card, I have a reading fluency, a reading comprehension and an oral reading card, and then a phonemic awareness card. I have a reading fluency, a reading comprehension and an oral reading card, and then within each of those cards there's a column for low tech, mid tech and high tech options, and then that repeats for all of those 11 different areas. And so what I've done is I've just researched and pulled out different options that fell into those categories. Because I want you to dig down deep when you are completing the input forms and when you're doing that planning and the evaluation, and I want you to really find where the student is struggling and where they could be successful if they had one of these options in place. And they're going to overlap just a little bit, because something in reading might be beneficial, in writing or in math.

Speaker 1:

But I tried to make them as specific as I could for the different categories and so you're just going to print these out on cardstock. You can either print them on colored cardstock or on white cardstock, whatever is your preference. There is a cover page for each section, and I would definitely put those section covers on colored cardstock so that when you're flipping through them you can easily find what you're looking for. So say, the reading cover is on blue, the math cover is on red, etc. Then you're able to just flip through it a lot easier and then I would print out the cover, the actual cover for the resource ring. I would print that out with a color printer if you could. And then, yeah, just print all the pages hole, punch them in the top left corner and put it on a ring and you're good to go. You can take that with you to every meeting, you can just flip through it and talk with the team about what they think would be beneficial for the student.

Speaker 1:

And then, lastly, I wanted to share with you a story that was a true success story for me as far as assistive technology went. I had a student I'll call her Emily from first through fifth grade, and Emily had autism and she had a lot of different cognitive deficits. She wasn't able to read traditionally, she wasn't able to add and subtract traditionally, but she did have some really good receptive skills. So for the first couple of years I kept trying to teach her her letters and her numbers. And then, I think in third grade, the IEP team was like is she going to learn this? Is this going to be something that she's going to be able to do eventually, or are we missing something? So we did some brainstorming, we went through that whole process that I put in the evaluation and the planning guide, but it was very informally done and we knew that she had some really good receptive skills. We knew that she liked having things of her own, especially little devices that she could carry around, and we knew she had a strong desire to be doing the same kinds of things her peers were doing.

Speaker 1:

And so, through this brainstorming, we decided that we were going to try the calculator with her. We gave her a calculator, we told her it was all her own and she didn't have to share it with anyone and she could use it anytime that we did math and you really would have thought that she had just won the lottery. It opened up a whole new world for her. I started with single digit addition and quickly moved to subtraction and she was able to input the equation and get the answer. And it was funny because she would write in the same manner as the calculator did, so like how the five is very boxed off, you know, with no curves. Her answers looked exactly like the calculator, but she was able to add and subtract. And then we moved on to double digits and triple digits and four digits and we moved into multiplication and division and, like I said, it just opened up a whole new world for her and it made her feel like she was the same as everybody else and it gave her a lot of independence because she was doing some of the same worksheets as her peers who were receiving special education services because of a learning disability. And I was able to give her more independence and her peers were so sweet with her, they would encourage her and they were proud of her and she would just beam, and so that's just one of the many success stories that I've had throughout the year. But had I not let her use that calculator, those goals on her IEP, I feel like they would still be recognizing numbers and adding the algorithm way, and that's not what she needed. So I encourage you to use this toolkit to find those deficit areas, those tasks where the student is not being successful right now, but they could be if they had a tool in place.

Speaker 1:

If you are interested in this toolkit or any component of it, really the toolkit is bundled. So if you just want an individual piece of it, if you just want the resource cards, if you just want the evaluation and planning guide or if you just want those input forms, you don't have to buy the whole toolkit, but I will leave the link in the show notes so that you can find it on my Teachers Pay Teacher Store. It's in the SPED Prep Academy TPT store. But if you are on my mailing list you will be getting a special deal on this resource. So watch your inbox for that. And if you're not on the email list, well, let's remedy that.

Speaker 1:

Go to wwwspedprepacademycom slash podcast prepacademycom slash podcast. It's S-P-E-D-P-R-E-P-A-C-A-D-E-M-Ycom slash podcast and sign up for the newsletter. Not only will you get this resource at a discount, you will also be notified anytime there's a new episode. You'll be notified of any sales that are happening, any hashtag sales that kind of pop up from here to there, anytime a new product is released, and much more. Staying informed through the newsletter is the best way to ensure you never miss out. I think this is going to be a really great tool that can just be a part of your everyday procedures when it comes to assistive technology. So get signed up today to get that special discount on the AT toolkit. Again, you can sign up at spedprepacademycom slash podcast. I'll leave the link in the show notes. Next month we are going to focus on inclusion, so enjoy your last week of March and I'll see you next week.