Activities 11 and 12

Exploring Everyday Items as Assistive Devices

What Students Do

These Activities teach students to create things out of everyday items that make their schoolwork easier. This requires them to think about the aspects of doing schoolwork that cause difficulty and then look in their environment for possible solutions. In these two Activities, your students are asked to experiment with technologies they invent and then evaluate their success.

Planning

Collect examples of common everyday items that can be used to assist in doing a task. For instance, think of all the ways sticky notes can be used such as marking a place, color coding categories of ideas, graphically organizing ideas, etc. How about a 3 x 5 note card? Blue tack putty? A ruler? Running out of ideas? Take it from a problem solving direction. What can be used to help stay focused when reading? What can be used to organize ones thinking? What can be used to reach an out of the way space? What can be used to hold something in place? What can be used to keep from knocking things off a desk or hold a piece of paper in place? What can be used to compensate for weakness in the fingers or to increase friction?

Introducing the Activity

Although Activity 11 gives examples of how people create their own AT with everyday items, your students may need help to start thinking about what could make schoolwork easier. Begin by pointing out that many people without disabilities use everyday items to make tasks easier and more comfortable. Present your students with a couple of common limitations that people have. Next, encourage them to think about what kind of everyday items people could use to solve their problems. They probably will need to think of several possible solutions before finding the solution that works the best.