Assistive technology project

Name: Personal Science Laboratory
Manufacturer: IBM
Description: microcomputer-based aid that could give visually impaired science student to perform many instrumental measurements with maximum independence.
Price: $75-500

Who needs technology?

I’m a science teacher and I have a hard time thinking of ways on how I can integrate assistive technology to my student’s who have learning disabilities. Although in my experience, I haven’t encountered kids who needs extra help in my science class. When I was teaching chemistry in the past years, I never thought that it’s possible to teach in a disabled kid especially in the lab. I came across an article about, assistive technology in science laboratory, and it talks about creating a high- technology based aid for a blind chemistry student. Lunney and Morrison put effort in helping a blind chemistry student learn science in a meaningful way. It was brought to their attention to give visually impaired student the opportunity to understand and experience working in the laboratory despite the disability.

Research:

According to the article, it was a researched which were funded by the U.S. Department of Education and consist of creating a machine with software that could help visually impaired chemistry student to perform many instrumental measurements with maximum independence. At first it was an expensive high-tech instrument costing $8000 but has later on reduced it’s price. It is a computer aided machine that communicates with the standard serial port in the computer and reads it’s various sensor probes upon receiving commands from the host. It has sensors for pH, temperature, light intensity,mass and distance. It is called PSL – Personal Science Laboratory that conatins a lot of features used mathematically in science. There are sound cards available that can work with it which is called Sound Blaster card by Creative Labs and are offered at a reduced price. This technology uses talking, whistling and music to enhance a deeper level of learning with visually impaired kids. The talking lab station have features that are accessible to both middle school, high school and college kids. The software that comes with it consist of programs for performing titrations, infrared and visible spectrometry, gas chromatography and the like.

Benefits:

If computers are connected to a suitably adapted computer to instruments and sensors in a laboratory and provide with a suitable data acquisition and data analysis software, students have great way to make science more accessible to people with disabilities.
Knowing that chemistry, physics and other sciences are not easy to teach in kids with normal ability. How much more it is to teach in a disabled populace? A simple explanation doesn’t help even for those who can see and hear the teacher.

Recommendations:

I wasn’t able to find more articles to support my findings about Personal Science Laboratory. My recommendations will be limited and based only on one article I’ve read. I would say that this type of assistive instructional technology would be very helpful on visually impaired students. Teaching science to people with disabilities is very difficult to imagine. Most of the labs especially in colleges involves a lot of hands-on and are not easy. Through this inventions students who are not capable of performing these labs, can have the opportunity to have an experience of doing it the other way. As a science teacher, I would recommend any school to try to use this assistive technology especially for visually impaired students. This computer aided machine can do a lot of magic to let students feel that everything is possible in learning science and can have a hope that success can be achieved no matter what are the circumstances in life.



Article: http://www.rit.edu/~easi/itd/itdv02n1/lunney.htm