Dr. Penny Craig
<b>Department: </b>Special Education<br><b>Research Area: </b>Updated resources, new technologies, documenting lived, personal experiences of those with disabilities
Department: Special Education
Research Focus: Updated resources, new technologies, documenting lived, personal experiences of those with disabilities
Potential Student Project(s): Special education laws are constantly being changed and updated. New methods of working with children and adults with disabilities are being developed. Assistive and adaptive technology is constantly changing. Researching the latest publications and practices is an important part of updating courses and of ensuring students receive the training they need to be successful teachers. Looking at personal stories of those who live with varying abilities helps make learning about each disability more real and more applicable to pre-servce teachers. Documenting and experimenting with various technologies will help increase awareness of options for implementation of those technologies in the classroom. Your participation will keep you on the cutting edge of the best practices in special education!
Attributes/skills/background sought in undergraduate:
- willing to experiment with assistive and adaptive technologies
- willingness to explore new apps
- Mac/iPad/iPhone proficient
- basic understanding of search engines
- ability to organize digital resources by topic
- ability to organize adaptive and assistive hardware and software in a limited space - collecting and writing life stories
Mentoring Plan: The student will work 5 hours per week on the project, including a 1-on-1 interaction with me for at least one hour per week. Most weeks will be spent exploring and testing adaptive and assistive technologies, installing and testing a variety of apps for special needs; managing iPad and laptop storage and updating; learning about and researching the latest changes in special education law, assistive and adaptive technologies, and finding personal stories of success with assistive and adaptive technologies; exploration of autoethnography (writing your own life story/life experiences), ethnography (telling someone else's story), and biography (observing and collecting artifacts to tell another person's story)
Contact: 765-285-2774, TC 611