Today was a day of presentations. Starr, Meaghan and Greg started us off with a wonderful presentation and the visual of a word cloud. Way to go guys! I love how they used something that we learned about (or at least that's the first time I learned about Word Cloud) the first day of class and incorporated it into their presentation. Word Clouds are a FANTASTIC way to creatively say what you want to say. Here is a Word Cloud that I made about this course. It was a first attempt so not too bad!Thanks for the inspiration.
It was interesting to see the very creative ways that each of the groups used essentially 4 Apps (Book Creator, Clicker Sentences, Pages and Tools4 Students) to help students achieve success. It seemed to me that the common theme was that each of the Apps was fairly easy to use, that they could all be adapted to meet the individual needs of the students and that COLLABORATION amongst team members is ESSENTIAL for the successful use of any technology. Our ultimate goal is to provide our students with opportunities to learn and to express themselves. The accessibility and adaptability of the technology that was used in the presentations today allowed for that. Another main theme was the appropriate matching of the technology to the student. This is CRITICAL! As I have learned in the past few days with Lindsay, taking the time to complete a strengths and challenges list and filling out the Neurodevelopmental Framework is essential if we are going to ensure that the most effective and efficient technology is used with a particular student. Jeanette, Chelsea and I were to use technology to assist our student, Jude in completing his writing task. To accommodate Jude's needs, we used Book Creator to write and say our task instructions for him. He would then use those instructions to create his written task using the App Clicker Sentences. Here is a video of the task instructions that we created in Book Creator.
I think that before jumping in to using a particular App, as teachers, we need to really consider how efficient the use of this App will be for both the teacher and the student. We are all extremely busy and we cannot be using technology just for the sake of using the latest and greatest thing. We really have to look at technology with a critical eye. There are so many wonderful advantages to using technology and it has changed the lives of so many people in a positive way that we cannot deny it's usefulness but as Mrs. Welsford stated in her response to my last Blog post, "simpler is better!" Thanks everyone for your creative and informational presentations. It was a fun day despite our group's technological issues. Sorry group. My DELL failed me today. Shout out to Sonya for saving the day!
Our task today was to use an application of Assistive Technology for a student who struggles with reading and writing and who has a low incidence disability. My learning partners for this task were Jeanette and Chelsea. Here we are quite happy after having finished our task.
As you will see in our presentation in class tomorrow, we used the information that we had on "Jude" to come up with a list of his strengths and challenges and then complete a Neurodevelopmental Framework for Jude. These helped us to determine which Assistive Technology would be most effective and efficient for Jude to use when completing his portfolio writing. Since Jude has aspirations to work in a grocery store when he finishes high school, we determined that his task would be to write a cover letter highlighting strengths that he would bring if employed at a grocery store. We decided that Jude would use Clicker Sentences to complete his writing task and our instructions would be given using Book Creator. Our feeling was that Book Creator was an effective means of communication as Jude would be able to access the instructions both in print and spoken format. It also gives him the opportunity to hear instructions several times if needed.
Collaboration! I have to say that I was EXTREMELY appreciative of the fact that I was working with Chelsea and Jeanette. Hence the title of my Blog. We commented on more than one occasion about the importance of talking things out and trial and error when working with new Apps. When one of us didn't know how to do something, the other did. It was a real team effort.
How user friendly would these Apps be in the school environment?
As teachers,we are extremely busy! We need to use Apps that will be quick and easy. All three of us felt that the Clicker Sentences and the Book Creator Apps are very easy to learn and use. They could be taught to the entire team of people working with a student so that they could quickly modify the task if need be. This further emphasizes the importance of collaboration. I look forward to all of the presentations tomorrow. I'm sure that I will learn a lot from my fellow AT comrades.
