Microcomputers and Severely Handicapped Students: Are We Overbidding Our Hand?

Microcomputers are the wave of the future and will revolutionize educational technology as they revolutionize almost every other aspect of our lives. But are they always the most effective and efficient learning tool for severely handicapped students? Perhaps not. At least, they are not the best tool for all severely handicapped learners. There are less complex, less expensive, easier-to-produce, and easier-to-use media that can do an outstanding job of teaching specific skills. We need to be imaginative enough to realize that microcomputers may not always be the best answer, and we need to be realistic enough to look for simple or "low tech" methods when "high tech" is literally beyond the grasp of our learners. If we are truly committed to creating student-use materials, we need to learn from our severely handicapped students. They can tell us which medium and which method is best for them as individual learners. This paper will describe some of the media and methods now being investigated by the Instructional Media Production Project for Severely Handicapped Students as it develops student-use materials.