How COVID-19 influences the development of inclusion in the international and national context? Specifically focusing on exploring the assistive technology as an opportunity for the further development of inclusion with the two following focuses:
--effective e-learning for pre-service and in-service inclusive teacher training;
--the fundamental changes in the perceptions of schools, teachers and parents regarding the application of assistive technology in inclusive classrooms ?
Hi!
This is indeed a tricky question. Inclusion is one of the advantages of e-learning IF one has the access to technology (not only to afford it, but to be able to manipulate and use it -accessibility-). In addition, Inclusion has a broad spectrum, including disability but also referring to ALL students, regardless of their background or economic possibilities.
I think that we should be prepared, as professors, to teach our students in how to use e-learning in their pre-service training, but at the same time, we should be thinking about developing appropriate regulations or alternatives to ensure that ALL people have access to that technology, or to develop alternatives to ensure people with no economic resources or with other type of difficulties can have access it. In addition, e-learning should be prepared for different ability levels and for different disabilities.
Hi Run Tan ,
It is a real challenge to discuss inclusion in a certain moment like now. However, definitely the usage of innovation, new technology and artificial intelligence are the doors for the future and present. This is a very interesting topic. I am able to continues the debate.
Indeed, Pau Garcia Grau . we need to be very careful and sensible about how to implement inclusive teaching by being cautious of not creating exclusion in the process, be it conciously or unconciously.
As teacher educator myself, i embed the UDL approach in my seminar teaching to emphasize the role and application of assitive technology to ensure the representation, the engagement and the assessment of all students learning are made possible through the support of assisstative technology.
Of course, then whether assistive technology are available and also being taught and implemented by teachers are still the forefront issues to be addressed !
Thanks Mauro Luisetto for your interest. I am planning to embed assistive technology into preservice inclusive teacher training programs. So it will first be an intervention study and then as assessment of the effectiveness of the intervention study, there will be mixed method design. In the end, I intend to prepare our German preservice teachers ready for the more and more diverse student groups in german secondary schools. This issue of embeding assistive technologies in preparing teachers to be ready to accomodate diverse students' needs is also becoming more urgent since the Corona is making traditional teaching more difficult.
Thanks Leonardo Mataruna for your input!
Yes, it is. to sustainably implement inclusion is already of great challenge and now in this compicated situation, it is extremely so.
In my teaching and research, I am prepaing my preservice teachers to be able to teach more diverse students in more innovative and sustainable ways. This could be achieved only by working closely with my students and be open to apply different new ideas and innovative technologies.