Meeting 3

One area to be cautious about is that when presenting the idea to a headmaster, I will need to be very careful not to imply that the school is sitting on funds or is doing an inadequate job of providing assistive technology to the special needs students. The school would need to identify three to five students who have been tested and could benefit from assistive technology and have this built into their AYP. By working with students who have already been identified, the parents might be more willing to let me work with their child.
The way this project is heading, the major issues would be addressed for the problems with assistive technology by the funding being provided, the technology being supplied, and I would provide the information, knowledge, and experience with the Assistive technology in order to integrate it into the home life after school hours. I would have the time to work with the child with the AT, the parents, the teacher, and determine whether and how the AT was improving the lives of the child, teacher, and family. This would be a case study to see how much the one item of technology could change lives. From where I sit right now, I feel that everyone would benefit from this arrangement. The school gets the technology. The parents become competent with the technology, and I help them integrate it into the home. Their child also is provided the technology that the testing deems necessary. For me, I would learn about the technology, get the opportunity to work one on one with special needs children, form relationships with these families and teachers, and be challenged to find new ways to use technology in the homes. I would spend a lot of time going to interview/check in with the teachers, parents, and children to find out how the technology is working for them individually. I would love to also look into the cultural aspect of how technology is used in different cultural settings. This fascinates me, too.
Because I would be driving so much, I feel that my proposal would be asking for technology and gas money/food money for interviews. Those are the only things I can think that I would need at this point. On this project, my hours would be very reasonable. I could meet with the teacher, parents, and kids weekly, write up/evaluate those times, and have phone interviews when needed.
To summarize the meeting again, the main problems with AT are Time, Resources, and follow through. With this project, I believe I would be addressing these issues, making a difference, and putting in adequate time and energy according to my role with the Knights Foundation.
I was also reminded in the meeting that we had talked about bring on an adviser to help me with this project. This would be amazing because I would love to not feel like I was bothering someone to ask them to go to a meeting with me to meet with the principal. The project will look so much more official if I have a professor of special education along side of me in the Milledgeville community. At this point in time I would love any of the three I met with, but Dr. Wills makes the most sense to me because he is my cohort leader.
The reason the post before this is marked for an extra hour is that I went to go meet with Cara Meade to get her folders of information about AT, and it took an long time on Tuesday.
My next steps are:
Form an argument to propose
Make sure the Knight team is in agreement, likes the project direction
Bring on an Academic adviser
Pour over Cara Meade's amazing information about AT
Talk to Mrs. Sheila
Look up types of AT
Find out the Price ranges we are talking about

(40 min)