Author: Jessica Drechsler

With the growing span of technology in modern society many aspects of society are being changed. For example, at the grocery store we now have the option to scan our own items at the self check out which 30 years ago was never thought of. This same idea applies to the field of Special Education which is the education of students with diverse abilities. Special Education was established relatively recently which many find shocking, in 1975 the first public law pertaining to educating those with disabilities entitled “The Education for all Handicapped Children Act”. Before this act many children were institutionalized and lived in horrible conditions and this was documented by Geraldo Rivera’s “Willowbrook” expose. This law was later changed to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act in 1990 and gave students with disabilities the right to free and appropriate public education in the least restrictive environment. I personally find this shocking that the education of students with disabilities was ignored for so long but in the classrooms today it is much improved.

Special Education has benefited so much from technology and without it many students would be unable to even communicate let alone learn. Assistive Technology are devices that assist those with disabilities in their everyday lives as well as in the classroom. For example, a child with cerebral palsy could have trouble producing speech and their motor functions and with a device that uses what is called “eye gaze” they can simply look at a specific word or picture on a screen and the device will produce speech. If a child with a disability has great motor skills they can use an Ipad app called “Proloquo2go” which allows for them to form sentences by choosing from pictures on a screen and it will generate speech for them. Speech generation devices are so powerful because so many individuals with disabilities before this assistive technology were unable to express their thoughts and learn in the classroom and now they finally have a voice and that is so powerful. Another example of an assistive technology device is navigation assistance so that students with visual impairments can navigate their school and other environments with ease. This device speaks aloud to you while you are walking and tells you what you are near and how far you are away from where you are trying to go. Special Educators now can use this assistive technology in the classroom and can easily adapt their instruction to their students. There are forms of this technology that can help individuals with various types of disabilities learn in the classroom and in life and without technology the education of these individuals would be completely different.

When beginning this class I thought I was well versed in technology. I had always been the person that my friends and family would confide in with their technological problems and I was almost always able to solve any problem. After taking this class and exploring new technological as well as conceptual ideas I now realize that the knowledge I possessed at the beginning of the semester is such a small part of all the knowledge available pertaining to technology and that I did not know as much as I had previously thought. My view of technology has now become so much broader and I can see the different ways in which it can be utilized. I connected during class discussion the ways in which this class allowed us to use our computers in different ways to Walden in Thoreau’s description of the change in use of wood. In Walden by Thoreau, he describes the importance of wood, saying that “It is remarkable what a value is still put upon wood even in this age” and that “after all our discoveries and inventions no man will go by a pile of wood”. The material of wood is still just as valuable today as it was in the time in which Walden was written but what has changed is the usage of the material. For example, many of us do not use wood to warm our houses as Thoreau did during winter at the pond but we still use wood for things such as building. This exact logic can be applied to the way in which we are using our computers in this class. Our computer has not changed in importance but the way in which we are using the technology has changed causing us to view it in a new way. The ways in which we use our computers and technology will continue to change as time progresses just as the uses of natural resources such as wood have changed.

The novel Metadata truly encompasses how this class has changed my perspective on technology and the way in which I look at data in general. The quote which I find myself constantly referring back to is “a roomful of books is not a library” (p.13). The concept of Metadata is one that was entirely new to me prior to this class and the idea that the organizational system used in a library is a form of metadata is fascinating to me. Organizational systems are all around us and we have been trained in the ability of “coding” these systems. For example we understand that a space in between two chunks of text signifies two separate paragraphs, we have been trained in the ability to “code” the system of “text organization”.  Without the Dewey Decimal System a library is simply a room full of books just as when we were editing text in XML we had to follow a strict coding pattern or else it is simply jumbled letters, numbers and symbols. In order to know where to find the book you are looking for you must possess the knowledge of the “Dewey Decimal System” and in order to understand XML you must possess the knowledge of the specific syntax/system used in XML. When participating in the “hands on” aspects of this course such as exploring the command line in VirtualBox or plain text editing in Atom I have learned that our computers are so much more powerful than we think. As a society many of us are using only a small part of what our computers are truly capable of simply because of ignorance and this course has taught me to seek out different ways in which we can utilize technology. Metadata is all around us, society is made up of metadata and certain organizational systems and once you open your mind to seeing these organizational semiotic systems it is impossible to “unsee” it.