My Big Take Aways

My Big Takeaways- 

        Well, this is it!  We have come to the end of our journey. It flew by, but I can hardly remember what it was like before the course started.  I have to admit, I have had technical difficulties, (for example, I am re-writing this, since I just replaced it with my previous post accidentally), but many people have come to my aid.  Which brings me to my first big takeaway, which is collaboration.  Collaboration has been a big movement in Education.  In any profession, it is important to communicate with each other.  
    I think of the old saying that,

 "It takes a village to raise a child."

        There are so many people that are needed to help each child, the Assistive Tech. Specialist, the Occupational Therapist, the Physio Therapist, Speech-Language Pathologist, the Classroom Teacher, the Resource/LC Teacher, the Principal, the Guidance Counselor, etc.  We all must work together in order to make a consistent plan for these children.  
        We did many activities in groups in  this course, and even when we were at odds, we came together and made a fun project.
       My next big takeaway has to do with our mindset.  We have learned so many Apps that are game changers.  They give a voice to a child who doesn't speak.  They help to engage the minds of our reluctant readers and writers.  At one time, we thought that these children simply did not want to work.  Now we know that there are many resources that can make it possible for them.  Here are some Apps that I look forward to using;

 

            
           It is all about providing access.  I think back to the old saying;

"It is the curriculum, and our teaching methods, that have the "disability" , not the children."--- Unknown.

            Once we realize this fact, it means that we have the ability to help these students to produce incredible products.  They will meet their Outcomes and grow by leaps and bounds.  
         Once we have this mindset, it tells us that we can 't just rely on these products that Apple has so graciously provided us with.  We must look around at our surroundings and look for anything that can provide the access that these students do not currently have.  This is why we did the Low Tech. assignment.  We looked through the Dollar Store for any item that can make learning accessible to all.  
         I leave you with this video.  Also, Congratulations to the graduating class of 2015!

 
       
         

Low tech presentations-July 21

Tena and Starr- a baby bottle can be used as rattle, or as a handle for those with fine motor challenges. 

Meaghan and Greg-  Meaghan puts Velcro under the desk. They get very dirty, so they need to be cleaned or replaced.  Hair brushes can be used to hold index cards.

Jasmin and Stephanie- said that cold packs and hot packs are great sensory items.

         Glow sticks can be used as a pack to help students who go into crisis mode, they can use it to calm them down. Their inventions were for holding a key.  They glued some Velcro.

Sonia and Tracey- the pancake squeeze bottle. They thought of a child with Cerebral Palsy and they crazy glued

Ken and Mike thought of luggage straps, to keep them from losing their stuff.  They can use a frisbie to eat on like a plate and not spill it.
      A large magnifying glass can hang around a neck or sit on the table for students that have vision impairment.

Kayla Cotton- she liked tennis balls for a grip, they can go on the bottom of chairs, and some can use them for sensory items. For cooking, her child with CP can use suction cups from a bow and arrow set, to help hold her hold a pan down, to keep it from slipping.

Corbin- a blackboard mug. So he used it to have a non- verbal students to let them communicate.  Corbin made a Wrist holder for a spoon.

 

 Chelsea and Jen- glove can be used to make an IPad touch grip. They also used a grip and a suction cup on the bottom from a bath Mat.

 Jeanette and Sarah-  They used sticky tabs that are transparent, or binder covers or goggles. When a student looks through any of those items, they can see the words more clearly.  It stimulates a part of the brain that helps to unscramble the letters.  The colour can help with Dyslexia,  and it is fun for tracking the words.  Their invention was for drooling. They thought of a chewable necklace and it would help him develop his jaw muscles and it is a good sensory item.

  Francine and Lee-She thought of a grade Primary student a cushion for sitting with neck support, but it can be used for children who fidget, or for core strength, because they can sit on it.

       Their invention was an oven rack "reacher". They thought of a student with restricted movements. It can be used by a person in a wheelchair too.

Heather and Cailyn- The BINGO dobber can be used to help students with fine motor skills.  They can use cups from the dollar store for stacking which is a fine motor practice.  Their inventions were using the chalk boards that can be used with Velcro on the back and make a spot for kids to stick cloth balls onto the Velcro. Students  who fidget may use it.  The phone receiver can be used to give people an easier handle.

July 20,2015

July 20, 2015

Giffin has a very hard time with fine motor skills.  He needs some handy tricks to help him to keep from getting frustrated.      

     It can be very expensive to purchase assistive technology.  So here are some inexpensive ideas to help with that

       The Glow Sticks are for students who have trouble with fine motor skills. This way they can just lay out the letters using Glow sticks to form the letters. 

 

      Griffin may find writing to be a very daunting task. The Ball Scoop is great for practicing fine motor skills. This is particularly good for a student who is non verbal. The Ball Scoop can be used to practice sliding the ball to an answer on a Math worksheet.

         The Glue Dobber is a much larger writing utensil than the pencil, which helps any student who  has a challenge with the hand grip.

        The Muffin Tray is much more sturdy and stable, than a cup or ice-cream carton, for holding paint. Some students The Shaving brush will glide across the page and hold the paint in the bristles from the muffin tin. I'm sorry, the pictures are giving me some technical difficulties, but they should hopefully be loaded in soon.

Assignment presentations

Assignment

         Today we worked on getting the presentation presentable.  The hardest part is always ensuring that the children have step by step instructions.  This project made good use of our Task Analyzing Skills.

 

          We examined the Neurological Framework and we checked to see if we had made the right decision about why we chose to use Book Creator.  We liked that the focus was on the content of the resume, and not on the writing.  The point of doing a resume is to demonstrate to an employer that you have the skills and abilities necessary to do the job well, and Book Creator seems to have the ability to do that.
         We filled the class with typing and discussing what to keep in the presentation.  It felt something like a PLC.  So, I guess it is a light day, for Blog reading.  Lucky you!!! So, you can do this...

 

July 17, 2015

Starr, Meagan and Starr presented Leopold for us. His long term memory and his receptive language is strong. He has a lot of trouble with mobility, details, social cognition.  They did not really know about higher order cognition, because he is nonverbal.
       They made taking Leopold to the farm and getting photos as an engagement piece for him. They had a very clear break down of the activity. They used an EA with the student to help ensure that they were able to track his progress, and monitor his behaviour.

Vivian is a high functioning student who has trouble with organization, self-regulation,
Tools4 Students has graphic organizers that are great for helping her to organize her thoughts.  They used breaks to help her keep from getting frustrated.  I think that they did a great job of matching the apps to Vivian.  They thought of all of the different apps and

             Heather, Cailyn and Corbin- Also had Jessica.  They chose Book Creator as the App to help, just as we did. Her problem with working memory, may mean that she needs something that does not require thinking of content and then co-ordiinating that with the process of writing the material. I like that they said that it is hard to know what she can do in terms of higher order thinking, without having met her.  They also said that once this set up is done, it can be used later for other students. I think that we looked at Jessica as having more difficulty than they did.  I think that working with her daily, would give us the information necessary to know which method would work better.


Tena, Sonya, Tracey, & Maggie- They had Jake.  Jake is a higher functioning student with Autism.  Jake helps out people who are picked on. He is distracted easily. He can be exhausted and overwhelmed when he has been working on a task for a long time.
           Pages is the best App for Jake because his cognitive ability requires him to have more independence. He is also familiar with the app anyway. The yellow highlighter had all of the instructions, and then he can put each part into his own words.

Jenn, Jeanette, & Jasmine- They had Jude who is an emergent reader, but his receptive language is excellent.  He needs single step instructions. His expressive language is a challenge. The Neuro-developmental framework showed that Clicker Sentences was appropriate for his age and cognitive ability. They would use both Book Creator and Clicker sentence.  Book Creator would  be good to help him with his challenges with following directions.they used Book Creator to give step by step instructions.  They used the marker to show where to touch the screen, etc. They mentioned the need to train EAs, teachers, and students on each of these tasks. I think this is a great idea.

Francine, Sara and Lee- They had Leopold, They noticed he responds well to verbal instructions.  They thought Leopold would benefit most fro a portfolio because there are fewer words, it allows visuals.  They used two i-pads to create a social story of Leopold.  They started b;y showing a step by step instruction on how to do Book Creator until they learned that he didn't need that much instruction on the use of the app.  He needed the structure of Clicker sentences in order to do the work.  They used the "guided" sentence set option to help give him the structure he needs. The punctuation is provided, so that keeps Leopold from getting too bogged down on procedure which causes frustration.

No class on Monday.

This afternoon Maggy and I went to the Dollar Store to look for Low Tech. Assistive Technology.  When I got home.  Here is what my children were working on...

        They came up with something very creative.  I got lots of pictures, but I wasn't doing overly well with the ideas.  Maybe I was overthinking it.

Book Creator, Clicker Sentences, Tools4Students and Pages

 Clicker Sentences 

Clicker Sentences- gives a great range of learning levels.  I love how this App allows you to scaffold! 


 








         





       You can create sentences  and put them in sentence order, guided order (in which it highlights the next word for them), Randomly or in Alphabetical order. You can have the words spoken as the student touches each word, or you can turn off, "speak each word." When the sentence is complete it reads the full sentence.  This helps students to realize the connection between words and sentences. You can even create pop-ups that allows the student to view what the sentence should look like before attempting to sequence the words. 
      For reluctant writers, it may reduce a lot of anxiety that they can use words that are in front of them and no longer have to worry about spelling the words. It may help with spelling, because it requires recognition of the words in the sentence set in order to create the sentences.
        This App is a literacy building program.  If you are assessing content, then Book Creator or Video Scribe may allow for students to concentrate more on the meaning of the content.

   Tools 4 Students

           Tools 4 Students has a lot of great graphic organizers for higher order thinking.  Upper elementary or enriched students may benefit from this structure, because it allows them to handle more difficult tasks with independence.  It features, Cause/Effect, Character analysis (identifies how a character acts, looks, and feels), and another four windows (identifying what the character sees, hears, tastes and feels), Pro/Con, Drawing conclusions (by merging from three different sources), and many more.  This would be a valuable tool for many Resource Teachers. 


 

 

Pages is another app that we explored today.  This is a Word Processor.  It can do what other word processors can do, so I have been using it a lot lately.  I just need to learn how to export it to email, since my laptop does not have Microsoft Word on it right now.

 Book Creator is a quick, easy and engaging way to create personalized books on any topic.  You can add pictures from your photo albums or import photos or videos to the book.  You can easily insert text, or you can easily use the sketch pencil to draw any diagrams or make arrows or words to label diagrams.  It can even be uploaded onto iBooks for publishing.

 Helpful Tip to remember: Volume Purchase Program allows teachers to pay half for Apps, when they purchase in bulk.

Literacy and Low Incidence Disabilities

We were talking about transitioning students to university and adulthood, in class today.

What are the best strategies to effectively help them communicate their qualifications?

How do literacy skills impact the effectiveness of our communication?

Students who have low incidence disabilities feel alone and helpless. 

 How can we help those students transition? They often have trouble with transference of the skills. How do we teach resume writing to these students? 

      We were challenged to imagine a trip to the grocery store with a student with low incidence disabilities. What challenges are presented.  Firstly, a grocery list requires literacy skills, short term memory skills, long term memory skills and comprehension. Being able to understand the specials being offered over the intercom, and on the price tags, requires comprehension. Being able to communicate with the cashier requires conversation skills.  These basic daily tasks can be intimidating for many of our students.  We need to practice these skills in the most authentic way possible.
      Apps like Video Scribe can be a good App to help give an opportunity to both practice literacy skills, and incorporate images and videos to help make connections to the given lesson.
       The vastness of the brain processes involved in resume and portfolio creation is intense.  It is important to realize how difficult it is for these students.  We also have to impress upon these students why we write resumes.  Students must buy into the whole idea.
         By using a voice recording, and adding it to pictures of the students, it helps a young student to practice explaining what her skills and abilities are.
          I found filling out the neurological Framework to be an excellent assignment because it would be a good way to understand the student. It is good for understanding the vocabulary terms more clearly (terms such as, "higher-order cognition", "Social-cognition", "Verbal Pragmatics", and "Non-verbal pragmatics".  You have to understand the definitions in order to truly fill in the framework accurately. It also shows how important it is to actually work with the individual. 

"Trying to give meaningful responses without having met the student is like doing a puzzle without looking at the picture."--- Mark Hill

         Tomorrow we will take what we learned today and we will integrate the technology that is needed to offer solutions for these students.  I think that thinking of resume writing and life skills, is the most important thing we can do.  We get caught up with the assessment of academic skills and behaviour profiles, but we don't think put enough emphasis on essential life skills that will be used after students leave our care.  

Please share your ways of incorporating  life skill training in your practices.
      

Assignment #1 Proloquo2go

       I think, that I could get caught up creating elaborate boards, on Proloquo2go.   In this assignment, we were asked to create a communication board for a given subject. We chose Lisa who was a University student and a Mother, who had lost her ability to speak when she was young child.  We tried to keep most of her case true to her video, but we needed her to still be a minor.  So, Mike and Ken and I imagined Lisa to be a High School student. 
      Mike made an Ultimate activity for Lisa,

and Ken, made a cooking lesson for her. She will make a delicious stir fry.

      I created an activity where she had to find examples of good Marketing strategies being put to use in the grocery store.  For example, she would have to look through a grocery store near the school to see if the displays were visually pleasing and following the basic principles of advertizing that she had been learning about in class.

      We found that in some ways working with an older and very intelligent student made the board creation to be simpler, but yet in some ways it was not.  For example, it was easier because we weren't limited in the words we could use, yet on the other hand, designing a board with that much vocabulary requires more organization to keep it user-friendly.
      We decided to keep some of the pictures on the buttons in order to make it easier for her to find the buttons quickly.  That is the down side of having a lot of buttons to control--it is much harder for her to find them. I found the grid size was something that was hard to get used to.  It was a delicate balance.  If you put too many on one page, it makes the board busy, but if you don't then you have to toggle back and forth among folders. 
       It is easy to see how this program could be used for many students. I am wondering about whether schools would still want to pay for Proloquo2go for a student is diagnosed as Non-verbal, but who also has trouble with following directions, and is often without an EPA.  Is it still the case that Principals, or School Boards would take the chance to pay for an App that is guaranteed not to completely cure the problem?  Would it be better to spend money on an EPA that can prevent a student from getting distracted?  There are other apps that may serve as an alternative, as well.  Perhaps Clicker Sentences would be more useful.  Let me know what you think.
       Thank you, Mike and Ken!  Lisa is in good hands. "Ultimately" She is really Cooking now!

Educ 5173- Communication- July 10

With communication devices, we have to guess what the students want to communicate, which is a downside. Which is to say, we as teachers need to program the software to allow for what the children want to say.  We also have to ensure that the student knows how to use the device.  Role play can be a helpful  way to ensure that this is happening.  Walking the students through the process of making simple sentences will be a great way to foster the all important relationships that we have with students.

3 things that we need to communicate-
1 Joint attention
2.  common language
3 communication partner

Proloquo2Go has a lot of incredible accessibility options. You can create the size of the grid.  You can create the size of the buttons, the size of the text screen, and the size of the toolbar.  You can space out the buttons to make it easier for students with visual impairment, and also students with trouble with fine motor skills. You can create buttons, by either searching for a picture or by importing a picture. You can create folders and have categories within these folders for students who are currently able to look for buttons within folders, or you can create separate folders for those who require more basic access. 

Proloquo2go is designed for an individual, so it is best for students to not share a device that has this app. Each folder always has the core buttons in the same place so the student will always know where to find them.

Summer Institute (Summer Conference)

"It takes courage to be reflective and change how we do things!"-- Cindy Giffen

            The Summer Institute encouraged us to look at our courses from a very different perspective.  Dr. Micheal Corbett's words were that of encouragement.  He reminded us that a lot of the negative thoughts that teachers have are merely a reflection of the fact that we have been given so many changes from the government and are constantly told that our education system is broken.  When in fact Nova Scotia who has a small population, is only 9% below the average for Canada.




             Dr. Greg MacKinnon told a story about a girl who wanted to show him a computer game and she let him try it, but she kept taking it back again to show him how.  She kept telling him that he was pushing all the wrong buttons.  Finally, she took her game back and said,...

 "So, you don't have a computer, do you?"

             I thought that this just goes to show that it is easy to make assumptions about people.  I think that we need to keep in mind that;

"Just because someone does something differently, it does not mean that they are doing it wrong."

        This connects both to our recent work on presuming competence, and also to what Cindy Giffen was saying about collaboration.  We want and need to confidently and decisively present our points in Team meetings, but we have to also remember that there are many perspectives and ways of achieving our goals.

              Johanne Syms spoke about the need to support all students.  She reminded us of the power that we have in affecting these children.  She talked about LGBTQ.  There is a high rate of suicide among our youths who are marginalized by dominant gender roles that have been pushed on them. It is our responsibility to use our collaborative skills to stand up for these students.

EDUC 5173- July 8, 2015

       

                           Ban The Average

Requires Adjustable Seats

Designing Fighter Jets

Educ 5173- July 7, 2015

 July 7, 2015
         Today we used Video Scribe to introduce a partner. My partner was Corbin.  We found the app very useful.  It was great for getting information from students without forcing them to do much writing.  This app allows us to select images on any topic and include it in any assessment.  You can add voice over to discuss images.  We can add a musical background to help motivate students. Images can be drawn in front of us, And we can set the amount of time that it takes to draw each image.  It could be used to;

1. Tell stories using pacing to help with conveying the mood of the story.
2. Corbin mentioned how it could be used to model more complex Mathematical procedures.
3. Practicing How-to Books could be done by demonstrating on Video Scribe. Partners could each explain a procedure to their partner with minimal writing.
4. I love the idea that a classmate had said of creating Social Stories using Video Scribe.
5. Once the class has completed a presentation on Video Scribe, they could then sketch some of the images for an Art class, rather than using something from the classroom.

Practice post

Hi, I'm Mark. I'm just testing out my blogging skills.  I am using a tutorial, but I think that I will remember most of the tricks I learned in my Assistive Tech. class last year. This is where I should add a picture or two to keep it interesting.  These pictures tell you a bit about me.

Mark the Martial Artist (formerly)

Mark the skydiver, (formerly)

                                                                      

                                                                         
                                                                         

Married to Julia Hill

With two children

                                                                     

and Andrew

Laura

                       I am currently enrolled in my last two courses of my Inclusive Education degree.

 

I am interested in a career in Learning Center or Resource.  I have attached a few websites that I find to be very useful in the field. Enjoy!

The basics of Universal Design 

Here is a lot of information about LDs. 

Information about autism 

A video about handling troubling behaviors by Ross Greene 

Alberta's Resources on Inclusion 

PEBS and FAIS  

Please feel free to add to the list in the comments section.  I am always eager to see more valuable resources on the subject of Inclusive Education.