What is the Generation Tech column?
AT Program News (the free quarterly e-newsletter) is interested in how students with special needs (i.e. learning, sensory, and physical challenges) are using technology, and seeks to promote and help develop these first-person self-reflective voices with a column featuring their insights. Many 21 C students are learning and engaging with curricula in entirely new ways, and students with special needs are among some of the earliest adopters of new technology. Generation Tech will feature writing by students (grades 8-12 and post-secondary) who use technology to help them succeed academically. This may be with assistive technology or consumer technology.
Why Create Generation Tech?
The goals for the column are several: 1) to create a real-world writing opportunity for students—the column has a real audience and serves a real need; 2) to provide ATPN’s readership, including educators and families, with 1st person accounts of tech experiences used for academic (and in some cases social) gains—young voices can help readers learn what is possible in fresh and compelling ways; 3) to allow students to consider expectations and deadlines outside of an academic environment and imagine themselves fulfilling such commitments beyond school—the beginnings of job readiness; 4) to engage innovative educators who value writing for a real audience and/or are motivated to share student work alongside their teaching strategies and insights; 5) to provide students the opportunity to list publication on their first resumes.
Content Ideas:
AT Program News serves organizations and professionals charged with providing access to the technologies that can improve quality of life for persons with disabilities including students. With this reach in mind, Generation Tech submissions might include:
Student Tech Reviews: Students write about the tools they like the best and why. Tech reviews should come from a personal perspective on technology. How does the technology help them succeed? Learn? Create? Participate? What do they want to tell others about their technology? What should other students who have had the same challenges know about this technology? What should professionals consider? (350-700 words)
Success Stories: Educators provide success stories of hard to reach students and include student content (this may be other forms of media beyond writing). Generation Tech will consider student content selected by educators that helps illustrate a student success (i.e. new capacity to create content, to express abstract thinking, to show what they know more effectively). These require companion submissions: one authored by the educator and one by the student. Success stories should also have a tech-driven component (software/hardware that helped the student engage).
Other Ideas: ATPN would like to hear from students and educators with their ideas for submissions for Generation Tech. This project is under construction and will evolve over time (and perhaps spin off to its own space).
Download Generation Tech Outreach Handout (for Educators)
Contact:
Eliza Anderson, ATPN Editor-in-Chief
atprogramnews "at" gmail.com