PATI Grant Information and Resources Page

Overview:

For the 02-03 school year, PEP won a grant from the MD State Department of Education called the "Project Assistive Technology for Inclusion" (PATI) Grant. The grant provided $40,000 for training and materials. The main goal of the grant is to increase the opportunities for children with significant physical and cognitive delays to interact meaningfully with their environment using assistive technology (AT). By using appropriate AT strategies, children with significant delays can interact with adults and peers in a wider variety of settings.

Jump to resources for [Session 1] [Session 2] [Session 3] [Session 4]

Resources:

Training Session 1: Engineering the Environment

Our first training was held on November 25, 2002. We learned different ways to adapt materials so that children can have better access to them. We also learned about Active Participation Plans, which can help teachers engineer activites to make them more accessible. Finally, we learned how to plan activities that are repetitive with just one or two differences each time. That way a child can anticipate what will happen and participate more actively while learning something new each time.

Below are some activities that teachers created. Submit your own ideas to Linda Bastiani.

Pictures of adapted materials:

• Attendees can click here to see pictures of some of the adapted materials that we learned about.
• Click here to see pictures of materials that Aimee Bowen created.

Active Participation Plans:

• Goodnight Moon by Aimee Bowen
• Block Play by Aimee Bowen

Repetition with Moderate Differences

• Day and Night activities by Aimee Bowen
• Winter Holiday activities by Aimee Bowen

Training Session 2: Boardmaker

We learned how to create boards that use a variety of communicative intents to ensure that children are being provided with meaningful vocabulary. We also learned how to color the backgrounds of the symbols to match the Goossens and Crain color coding scheme. Symbols colored this way have a higher contrast and are easier for some children to see.

To download the following resources, you need Boardmaker for Windows v. 4. See the SOS page for help downloading.

• Attendance communication board for children with physical disabilities to take the attendance to the office

Training Session 3: IntelliPics

Training Session 4: Intellitalk II

• Phonics.iat is a very simple template created by Aimee Bowen for practicing -AT and -AD words. Create your own overlays or use one of the built in scanning overlays.