Interactive White Boards with Students with Severe Disabilities

Interactive white boards provide support to students with severe special needs by helping them to bridge the conceptual gap between the concrete and the symbolic. The fact that the items appear in a two-dimensional format on the screen, but can be manipulated helps students to observe and analyze the forms in different ways. After exploration of concrete items in a lesson, students can then see and use symbolic representations of those objects on the white board to complete a task. This can encourage some generalization of skills through the reinforcement and repetition of concepts.

Students with severe special needs can access the white boards in a number of ways. One way is with the traditional pen, though the use of the pen often requires the ability to have a pincer-style grasp and push a button. The wand is often used by students in wheelchairs because it has a larger reach. Teachers often affix the activator button down with tape to leave it always in the "on" mode. Studetns with switch or adapted keyboard access can use the white boards through the main computer - they can do single- or two-switch step-scanning.

The larger white board screen makes it easier for students to attend and participate with class activities in a larger room. Images on the screen are clear and free of the distortions often seen with larger televisions. Though innovation and imagination are necessary for a teacher using the interactive white boards with students with severe disabilities, the boards have advanced learning for these highly impacted children.