Low Tech Project

For this assignment, my partner Shelley and I decided that we would use a few of the items that we had purchased at the Dollarama and adapt them to suit our needs.

So, the first item for our project is the wooden place mat.  Originally, we have used this tool as is as a weighted lap belt for a student who may have spatial orientation difficulties.  For the invention portion of the project, we decided that we would use one side of this place mat to represent a portable keyboard for a student.  It is durable and we could write the letters on the keyboard (in proper order) on the place mat with the numbers on the top (spaced a few rows above the letter keys.  The reason this tool would be so effective is you can use it with a person who needs to learn keyboarding skills.  You can also use it to reinforce typing skills for a student.  In addition, you could use this place mat as a means of having a non-verbal student point to the letters in words that may be given in a spelling test in class.  They could also have this on their desk in front of them or on their wheelchair tray and use it to type out words of items they may want or in response to a question.  I think this tool would be very effective because the place mat is heavy, so it is durable; it is made of wood so it would last in terms of quality; the letters and numbers were put on with permanent marker, so they should remain durable and useful and also, the key sizes would be larger than a traditional type of keyboard so we could work on fine motor skill development with an individual, depending on their need.

I actually am thinking of a particular student when we came up with this idea.  This child is currently working on fine motor skill development and this would support her with this skill.  In addition, in terms of her IPP goals, for Literacy, she needs to work on pointing to the letters for words from her in class spelling test.  She currently works with an EPA for her entire day in the classroom and currently there is no means (that is no means available in this class currently due to financial considerations), for her to demonstrate her knowledge of the spelling words.  So, this idea would work perfectly and the EPA could have the keyboard on the child's desk in front of her and watch as she pointed to the letters for each of the spelling words.  She can even write the child's responses down on a sheet of paper for the teacher as her success in meeting this IPP outcome will need to be documented.  So, the persons responsible for supporting the development of this outcome will be the teacher, EPA and student (in terms of her proficiency in spelling words).

Another thought I have had since we first purchased this low tech tool, is that we could quite possibly hook this place mat keyboard up with a switch and connect it to the computer so that she can directly record her spelling words on the computer, such as in a Dragon Speak program.  However, since one of her outcomes is also to work on fine motor skill development, this invention was created as she can work with larger keys and get used to their order before moving on to the more traditional type of keyboard.

Our second invention was a ruler that we created on a yellow rubberized place mat.   This invention is merely copying a ruler on to the placement about one quarter of the way up the place mat.  The reason we went about one quarter of the way up the place mat is to give the child room to place their hands.  This low tech tool (place mat) has been adapted so that the person using it can control objects they are wishing to measure for mathematics.  This assists in meeting their IPP goal in mathematics on the measurement unit.  This child will be able to securely place their hands on the bottom portion of the rubberized place mat and then have the object securely positioned above the ruler.  The item will stay in place and the child will be able to maneuver the object with ease as it will not slip on their desk, etc. because it is on the rubberized surface.  This child has gross motor skill difficulties and having the ability to control an object and place it on an area where it can be secure enough to measure would be beneficial and useful in helping them achieve their mathematics outcome.

We also invented a third item that we thought would be useful as well.  They are customized pencil grippers (which can be seen in the picture above - we ran out of space on our digital camera and had to combine two pictures in one).  Normally a pencil gripper is three sided and can be triangular, or round and it thick so that a child can form a grasp.  Since we are talking about modifying or adapting a tool to make it more useful or functional, we thought of using modelling clay to make customized pencil grippers.  We took the modelling clay and created a more traditional type of gripper that is round in shape.  We put this around the pencil.  We did this for comparison as we created the second pencil gripper, which was customized.  We took our fingers and embedded them in the modelling clay - which was placed over the pencil.  This took an imprint of the way in which we hold a pencil.  We left that to dry so that the customized portion of the pencil gripper takes shape.  We also marked a letter T on the top side of the pencil gripper so the child will know where their top finger goes on the pencil.

This item can be used to assist children who have fine motor skill difficulties and provide them with a tool that they can grasp each time they want to use a pencil, that is customized to their grip.  They would have to be trained to find the letter T for the top and remember to always place their top finger in this area first so that the other fingers follow.  We could do this training by creating a social story in order to prompt and remind the child of the proper way to grasp their pencil so they can improve their fine motor skill development.  We also could use a visual cuing system for the child (depending on their need) with a graphic demonstrating for them how to put their fingers over the pencil gripper.

We hope that these items we invented can give other people ideas or that they can adapt and use them in their classrooms if they have children with similar types of needs.  I do caution though, that we are in the midst of patenting the "customized pencil grippers"!!!  So, don't any of you get any ideas!! :)  That is provided it is not already been claimed by another person! (Just teasing!!)