Reflection: Living in the State of Stuck by Dr. Marcia Scherer

Chapter 8

Reflection : Book-Living in the State of Stuck by Dr. Marcia Scherer
This chapter entitled “Dilemmas, Challenges, and Opportunities” has a look at why individuals with disabilities become users of assistive technology any why some abandon or reject the use of them. This is examined in each of the three areas of the Matching Person with Technology model, milieu , personality, and technology.
The Chapter was straightforward to read and brought home the fact that introducing technology needs to be thoroughly thought out to bring about the best match of person and technology. It clarifies that this needs to be a team approach involving experts in the appropriate field of the technology being sought out, AT specialists, parents, teachers, support staff, and related health professionals. In reality this takes a concerted effort of personnel who are overwhelmed with tremendous responsibilities on a daily basis. Often, with these responsibilities being so great and so little time, the assistive technology aspect for one student in a classroom or a caseload of many is not as much a priority as it should be.
The one aspect of the chapter that is of utmost interest to me is the necessity to thoroughly train “all” support people, teachers, EA/EPA, parents, in the settings that the technology will be used. This was also a point I took note of from our first AT class, Barb Welsford our course instructor. Regular follow up, yearly training and evolution of technology must be maintained.
For many students, due to cognitive or physical limitations , they are at the mercy of their teachers or support staff to make the technology accessible on a daily basis. An unease of mine at this current time is that EAs are hired by seniority rather than technological aptitude or skills/experience they possess. A student can have great success with independence and inclusion one year because the teacher and support staff are well trained, team effort, possess an appropriate attitude for the use of the technology and the next year the technology is not utilized because the support staff and/or teacher has little or no experience, interest, or time to support the use of it. This chapter talks about matching the person with the technology, I feel it is imperative to match technology of choice with support staff that have the required experience and interest. When computer technology is the technology of choice the person(student) is matched with support staff that are computer literate or at least possess an aptitude for computers. If PECS is the technology choice, someone trained with an appropriate level of experience needs to be paired with the student. Here is a possibility. A nonverbal Autistic student is introduced to PECS and has made significant gains with having a voice over the last two years. The third year a new staff is hired without the necessary training and experience to allow continuity in the student’s progress, that student may “stand still” or lose what has been gained while the new staff tries to catch up, in other words acquire the experience necessary to support the student to maintain her skills or move forward.
This MPT model seems to be a good model to follow however ideal at this current time in some situations. As I support this and it makes since, I don’t see it following through in the school system as straight forward as should be due to constraints of time, money, training needs, change over of personnel, and availability of experts in the field.