How Do I Use Technology in the Lesson Plan With Deaf Students?

Computers can help deaf students understand and master an objective.

Using technology in lesson plans can actually help students who are hearing impaired. If teachers use interactive whiteboards and personal computers, then deaf students are receiving information visually and interacting with the lesson. This will cut down on information they would miss if the lesson was only delivered using sign language or the student had to read the teacher's lips. Deaf students can participate in webquests, copy notes from an interactive whiteboard, and play interactive learning games on a computer. Some schools even have access to speech recognition software where the teacher's speech is converted to text for the deaf student.

Things You'll Need

• Computer with Internet connection
• Interactive whiteboard
• Curriculum
• Voice recognition software

Instructions

1. Look at the objectives for the lesson plan and decide which technology tools to use. For example, if it's a social studies lesson on explorers, a webquest where students have to visit different websites and read information about explorers to solve a problem would be a good lesson idea for hearing impaired students.

2. Lecture on the subject, and give directions for activities if your deaf students have access to voice recognition software. Students can read the notes on a computer with the software. If they don't, you can provide an outline or written notes on the interactive whiteboard so students can gain the information they need to master objectives or complete activities.

3. Create lesson plans that use the interactive whiteboard to teach deaf students and reinforce objectives. You can show students how to surf the Internet to find information, create an interactive lesson plan on a subject such as finding nouns and verbs in sentences, or demonstrate how to use Excel to create spreadsheets and graphs to satisfy math objectives.

4. Give students guided and individual practice where they can use their personal computers to master objectives such as creating their own graph in Excel.

References

• Cited Research Center: Multimedia Instruction for Students Who Are Deaf
• Resource Materials and Technology for the deaf and hard of hearing: Interactive Whiteboards