Assistive Technology
Assistive technology (AT) is defined as any piece of technology that helps a student with or without a disability to increase or maintain their level of functioning. It can help to compensate for a student's skills deficits, needs and/or area(s) of disability. When it is used properly in the classroom it can enhance students’ ability to perform and complete tasks with efficiency and independence. The key to effective AT is finding the right match between the AT tool, a student's needs, and the task. AT often includes laptops or tablets with specialized software programs, like speech to text, text to speech, graphic organizers and word prediction software.
RND is a Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) school. Students are permitted to bring their personal devices (laptop, tablet, etc... ) into the classroom.
In some circumstances, your daughter/son may be eligible to receive a Board issued device based on a recommendation from an Occupation Therapy or Psycho-educational assessment report indicating your child requires it for school. Please contact a special education teacher (SERT) at RND if you have any questions.
Most textbooks used at RND are available electronically to all students in a PDF format.
RND is a Microsoft showcase school. We use Office 365 as our productivity suite which gives our students access to programs such as Word, Powerpoint, OneNote, and Excel. Students can access Office 365 both at school and at home here. Students can save their documents to One drive so they are accessible both at home and at school.
Kurzweil is a web-based learning platform that delivers reading, writing and learning solutions for reading disabilities. Features include:
- Text-to-speech software
- Word prediction
- Dictionary
- A lite mobile version called Firefly is available for iPad users.
