Ros Chapman

Independent Special Needs ICT Consultant

Ros Chapman is a Special Needs ICT Consultant. She taught in Primary School for a short time, before turning to Special Education where she taught in an MLD School for 7 years. She established the first SEN/IT outreach service in SW Hertfordshire before moving full time into the Advisory Service in Bucks. She carried out assessments of children right across the physical and learning difficulty spectrum, advising the LEA on suitable IT equipment and programs to purchase. Her bid to NCET (now Becta) ensured that Buckinghamshire was one of the first four LEAs in the SENCo Forum Project. She has run numerous Training Courses to support staff who teach SEN children and has addressed many groups including visitors to the BETT Exhibition.

She took a one year contract at the University of Hertfordshire, teaching B Ed and PGCE students. She tutored on the B Ed SEN Short Course, and supervised the ICT assignment for the PGCE Course, at Kings College, London.

Ros considers her most significant contribution to the SEN ICT world to be the Keyboard Strategy, which she created in 1996, which enables students (and staff!) to learn the positions of the keys on the QWERTY keyboard in a maximum of 3 weeks. The strategy is used in many areas of Great Britain, in Australia and Sweden (where it was translated into Swedish and placed on the Education Department's SEN Website). An article about the strategy was published in the MAPE Journal. Ros has written two chapters for a book for the BDA (as yet unpublished) and an article for Nursery Equipment on Computers in the Nursery.

Ros became an Independent Special Needs ICT Consultant in 1998. She has a considerable Resource Centre with a wide range of access devices, equipment, programs and user guides which she hopes to move to new premises next year. Ros is a Window Box Partner, a Widgit Contact and Trainer, a Clicker Centre, and Inclusive Technology Centre, a SEMERC Centre and carries a full range of programs from many other software houses. She is a Member of the Institute of IT Trainers, NAACE, MAPE and NASEN.

She is involved in Charity work and has a keen interest in craft work and woodturning.

Training providers

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