My blog name is my article’s name. That’s fitting. As I traverse the maze of assistive technologies, my personal struggles have given me, what I feel is, a unique perspective of the topic. I have traversed the gambit of emotions from excitement to confusion to frustration to anger to bewilderment to hope to cautious optimism. There is a plethora of gadgets, gizmos, and tools out there. The challenge is how to keep it from becoming educational gaming as opposed to meaningful pedagogy. I can see why Andy and Erin go to workshops. There is a massive collection of information to sift through. And after you have sifted, and graduated from the casual thought of, “How cool.” the job of figuring out how do I incorporate these technologies into a meaningful teaching and learning experience through the technology, as opposed to a meaningful teaching/learning experience of the technology itself becomes a daunting task. The fact that I have the tool, doesn’t mean I know how to use it properly. Hence further studies and ongoing training are requiem.

I wish I could change my blog’s title to Cautious Optimism. As I see a modicum of success, the potential steps to the forefront, but I am still leery as to the implementation process.