Assistive Technology Interview

Lilit Bayburtian
EDTC 625
Interviewer: Lilit Bayburtian, Second Grade teacher at Rachel Carson
Elementary School
Interviewee: Tami Wisniewski-Dollar, special education resource teacher at
Rachel Carson Elementary School
DATE: March 6, 2012
For this assignment I interviewed Tami Wisniewski-Dollar the special
education resource teacher at my school. Mrs. Dollar has been the special
education resource teacher at RCES for 10 years. Mrs. Dollar has both
undergraduate and Masters degrees in special education. She is very
passionate about helping children with learning disabilities to strive and
succeed. She has had some coursework and trainings in AT (Kurzweil,
Bookshare and Clicker 5). The problem she sees with using AT is the limited
numbers of computers we have at RCES in classrooms. That prevents her
and other special educators to adequately use the time and resources
available. Mrs. Dollar currently has a kindergarten student who had
hydrocephalus and is currently has some paralysis on one side. This impacts
his motor skills and vision. He uses an adapted mouse to access Clicker 5 to
write simple sentences. He also uses adapted scissors, slant board and
raised paper.
An assistive technology software that Mrs. Dollar finds most helpful for
students with disabilities is Clicker 5. It helps students to access writing
assignments. It is motivating for the students and it removes reading barriers
because it has picture supports and reads to them.
Our school does not have too much assistive technology hardware, but
Mrs. Dollar likes to use the adapted mouse. She believes it is helpful for the
students with limited motor skills because it provides them with an easy
solution to the sophisticated mouse.
Mrs. Dollar mentioned that for our school the newest emerging
assistive technologies are Voice recognition software and hardware which
she had not had any training or chance to work with. She is hoping that
eventually our school will invest in these type of assistive technologies that
will aid our LD students more.
In her interview, Mrs. Dollar mentioned that anyone that works at RCES
can access the AT stuff we have at school. If a student has a disability that
requires AT we can access support from the HIAT (High Incidence Accessible

Technology) department and ask for a referral. They assess the student,
make recommendations for trial AT, train staff and then support the final
recommendations. They also have really great low tech and high tech
suggestions and resources on their website. They also do a lot of trainings for
anyone in the technologies we have available to us. You can access them on
the school system website by typing in HIAT in the search part.
Mrs. Dollar is very excited about all the new assistive technology that
is available now and has had numerous conversations with our principle in
regards to this subject. Our principle informed the school PTA and we were
promised some funds that will be allocated towards purchasing additional
assistive technologies for our students.