Great Guest Speaker

Assistive Technology in Special Education is near and dear to my heart since I have a son with a Learning Disability. I thought that I would share with you the name of a speaker who is very knowledgeable on this subject. His name is Todd Cunningham. He is currently completing his post-doctorate in Clinical Psychology at the University of Toronto. Todd is himself Learning Disabled and he speaks candidly about growing up as a Learning Disabled child and the impact assistive technology has had on his life. This sight http://www.zoominfo.com/people/Cunningham_Todd_276027061.aspx has some insight on workshops offered by this gentleman who has a great deal to teach all teachers about what it means to be a Special Education student in our school system and the role of assistive technology. Just a note I posted this sight from my forum where the hyperlink seems to work, but at least in the draft, it does not show the hyperlink.

The internet offers a place to share instant examples of inclement weather. These pictures are of a storm recently in Edmonton sent via e-mail by my sister.

Sonia

Power Point

As a teacher I have sat through many power point presentations and I've often thought how much better they would be with some video or audio components. Camtisia, a program that is easily downloaded from the web allows for this exact process. I am about to try to jazz up my power point presentation with this program. The tutorial makes it all look so easy. I'm just wondering if anyone out there in blogland has tried this program and if so, do you have any tips?

Sonia

Technology in Special Education

Technology is pivotal for special education students. I have used a digital camera as part of an assignment for a grade 3 student with autism successfully. Early in the school year, in cooperation with his E.A., I assigned him a project to take a picture of all of the staff of the school and pay attention to where their room or office was so that he could draw a map. This was my first position as a L.R.T. and I had little or no appreciation for how difficult this assignment would be for an autistic student, yet he persevered. My true goal in this assignment was to assist him in understanding pronouns, which to date he had not used. After much work and practice with his E.A., he finally presented his modified map, pointing out the pictures of the staff members and where he could find them, using pronouns. He was very excited because he took the pictures, I was very excited because he was using pronouns correctly. It was not very long after that until we started to see pronouns in his written work as well. Later, as an intermediate L.R.T. the use of the digital camera eased the transition to highschool for another of my students with autism, I allowed him to use the camera as he visited his new school with his mother, in order to take a picture of his new teacher and E.A. as well as classroom and cafeteria. This enabled his mom to review the pictures at home and calm him down about leaving our school. He had been experiencing great anxiety about the tranition and was starting to revert to stimming behaviours that he had not used in years, having the pictures to talk about what was coming next, really seemed to help. I have used Kurzweil, a text to voice program, to help some of my L.D. students research projects and Dragon Naturally Speaking to assist in printing projects and assignments with amazing success. One student in particular became so proficient that she is now a student mentor and trains other students on Dragon. The real reward to me though is the sense of accomplishment and independence this technology brings to these individuals. On a personal note, I was in the midst of having my son diagnosed with L.D. which is perhaps the reason I attended a workshop given by an L.D. P.H.D. student that was titled Technology in Special Education. That workshop inspired me to contact the board I.T. person and learn how to install and teach my kids how to use text to voice and voice to text software. As a parent of a now diagnosed L.D. son, technology gave me hope for his future, and the future of all my students. Finally, I'd like to mention the gifted student who I worked with in my first year as a L.R.T., I remember giving him an open-ended project using the internet as his research tool. He ran with it, and his classroom teacher was so impressed because he was having a great deal of difficulty with this student's behaviour. Having this student in my room to use the computer, allowed me to assist him with his social skills as well, which is often an area of concern with gifted students. All of this allowed him to have a very successful grade 8 year. I think often as teachers, we are at a loss when we have a gifted student in our classrooms. My advice is use all the technology you can and secondly, allow them a part in planning their curriculum and keep it as open ended as possible.

Sonia

Microsoft Highschool

It seems to me from all of my research that there are very few voices on the web for moderate use of technology in schools. Marc Prensky and his ilk would have us abandon our current curriculum and focus on more technological thinking. There are other voices that value the 3R's and hesitate to change. Trevor posted the, "Microsoft Highschool" in the forum and Ryan pointed out a very important quote from this article, written by Lianne George. "A study published earlier this year in the British journal Education 3 to 13 found that kids who read stories on computers don't retain information as well because they're often distracted by sounds and pictures. Also, computers don't require children to generate images with their minds, a process that serves as an important mnemonic device. In their 2004 study, University of Munich economists Thomas Fuchs and Ludger Woessmann looked at standardized test results from 31 countries and found that while students who never used computers or the Internet scored lower than those who sometimes do, those who use computers more than several times per week scored lowest of all." It does give one pause, if we are using digital storytelling to improve comprehension and the opposite happens, should we be employing this strategy. It is only one comment, but I believe that it is best to have a balance. I'm glad that I saw this quote, since I am very enthusiastic about going back to school and trying all of my new tech knowledge out, I may have overdone it without this sign of caution.

Sonia

Use Your Brain

This morning I had the frustrating experience of asking a new pharmacist a question about my asthma medication. Let me explain, in the last few years I have definately been spoiled, our pharmacy was run by a couple who were as friendly as they were efficient. They new almost all customers by first name, they could correctly recite all your medications without consulting the computer and they could quickly answer questions about any current medications. Fast forward to today when I asked a fairly simple question about dosage on my asthma medication and the young summer replacement pharmacist immediately assumed the position behind the computer asked illogical questions like, "you are only going to take it when you need it right?" and the she finally pieced together an answer that did not answer my question and I could tell that she was clearly flustered, often checking the computer for confirmation of her thoughts. I did not feel confident that she really new anything about my medication although I know that the education for a Pharmacist is extensive so I do not question her training, I just don't think that she relies on her brain enough. This brings me to my point, I'm sure my previous Pharmacists relied only on their brains as they graduated prior to the daily use of computer technology. In Marc Prensky's article he says that we are teaching a backup education, but isn't it important that we do backup our learning into the only computer that we truly have with us at all times. Our brains. After all brain research indicates that if we do not continue to fire the synapses of new learning the information will not make it into our long term memory. So yes, we can look up the algorhthym to division but why would we not want that information in our long-term memory, brain capacity is huge so we are not in danger of overloading our brains, but let's not underload them. If the information is truly unnecessary the brain has developed a system to prune unused information at least 3-4 times in a lifetime. I know that my young Pharmacist has time to review asthma inhalers and my hope is that she will fire up the synapses in order to commit the info to her long term memory because it would be so valuable for not only her customers but also her own career.


Sonia

Filming a Public Service Announcement

This past year I taught my grade 6 students how to compare and contrast P.S.A.s and commercials. I then asked them to develop and film a P.S.A. I had a great deal of difficulty accessing video cameras from the board so I went to the local high school. The media teacher agreed to lend me 6 of her grade 12 students as Media Mentors. My kids were split up into groups and then they developped a story board and a script and then they practised their P.S.A. I expected the mentors to come in and film for the day, instead they were actual mentors, they went over the storyboards, they made suggestions on the script, gave acting advice, and best of all they taught my students how to film it on their own. It was a great experience, so much so that many of my students sighted it as their favourite part of grade 6 during a E.Q.A.O. assignment. The second part was that I walked my class over to the highschool and they spent the entire morning with their media mentors, editting their film on the computer. Unfortuneately the teacher was going to get me a copy of all of their P.S.A.'s editted together for Open House, but she was unable to do so. Still in all I would not have missed the experience in fact I would add a couple of components, now I would have them do the storyboard on the computer and I would add an extra sound component. In fact, one of my students actually did use her i-pod to bring in the sound effect of a police siren which really added to their P.S.A., students really are ahead of us in technology.

Sonia