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.