Technology is often used as a support simply for the sake of using technology. Its use should be strategic. In the photo above is a do now/warm up/bell ringer for a 7th grade class that involves creating a bar graph. One student with autism struggled with the fine motor skills needed to draw graphs by hand (see a student artifact in the upper right corner of the photo). I taught him how to graph on Excel and he had a standing directive to use the classroom computer as necessary.
When he entered class and saw the warm up in the photo above he immediately went to the computer and created the graph seen in the photo below. The technology allowed him to access content he other wise would not access. (He also developed an important skill.) The technology served a strategic purpose.
