Forms To Guide AT Trial Periods

The Education Tech Point for Trial Periods describes the steps that teams take to investigate whether a particular assistive technology solution will be useful for an individual with a disability before it is included in an IEP or other educational plan.  Trial periods are a little like a test drive. An individual with a disability, with the support of other team members,  experiments with one or more AT solutions and compares the ways that each one helps increase or improve performance.  Here are a variety of forms to guide planning for AT trial periods.

• Trial Period Plan Form:  The  helps teams plan for trials for one or more AT solutions and identifies the places and times within an individual's day when the device will tried.  The Trial Period Plan Form was designed to guide teams that are new to the concept of trial periods as they think about all the actions that will be needed.
• Trial Use Guide Form:  The Wisconsin Assistive Technology Initiative Development Team (WATI) has provided a fillable form which guides teams that are considering AT for a student as they identify where and when AT devices will be tried and the specific goal that AT will help a student attain.  This Trial Use Guide form-WATI is more concise than the previous form and is provided in a fillable format that can be used during a planning meeting.
• Trial Use Summary Form:  WATI also has the Trial Use Summary form-WATI as a companion to the Trial use Guide Form.form.  It offers a way to develop a summary of the results of AT trial periods and help teams make decisions about which AT solution might be most useful.
• iPads4Learning website- Kathy Schrock has developed a webisite that discusses many aspects of the uses of iPads in education.  One aspect of this website is particularly useful for trial periods during AT assessment because it offers several rubrics for critcal evaluation of mobile apps evaluations.  Rubrics are categorized by apps for learning and apps for productivity.
• Breaking routines into steps-Analyzing a standard routine to identify the cores steps  can be useful in figuring out exactly when and how to use AT. This Routine Assessment Form can help do that.
• AT Trial Action Plan-This AT Trial Action Plan-DATE form is part 5 of the Dynamic Assistive Technology Evaluation (DATE) from the Texas AT Network can be used to plan and carry out a trial period with AT.