Fourth Class

I was exposed to many new apps that I can use with a variety of learners during our fourth class. The nights first presentation, “New Apps for Learning Disabilities,” presented by Keisha and Donalda provided great information on three apps that can be used when working with students with learning disabilities. I found the Paperport Notes app and the Book Creator App of particular interest. As noted in their presentation, Paperport Notes is a great app to use with students at any stage of their educational career. This is a valuable app that can be used in early elementary schools all the way through the education system to university classes. One of the things I like most about this app is that it helps create a method of sharing documents between teachers and students. I can definitely see this app being of great use in the high school setting. Another great app discussed in this presentation was Book Creator. This app allows students to create ebooks using text, graphics, and audio. As noted in the presentation, the Book Creator app can also be a useful tool when creating digital portfolios. This app also makes fully accessible ebooks, which can be useful when teaching students with learning disabilities. 

The second presentation delivered by Mary, Courtney, and Amy entitled, “Top Free Apps in Special Education,” used a great infographic to display their school survey information. This infographic was a great introduction to the Canva website, where teachers and students can easily design graphic displays that can be used to summarise information or student learning. The presentation also used a graphic organiser to display and summarise the apps discussed in their presentation, breaking them down into appropriate grade levels and subject use. One app I found particularly interesting was the Science 360 app and how the presenters suggested that it could be added to creating a universal design for learning environment in the classroom.

Jeremy, Clarissa, Joseph, and Michelle’s presentation, “Learning about Apps to Support Students with Learning Disabilities,” discussed many apps that I am interested in trying in my own teaching practice. As an iPad and IPhone user, I occasionally find it difficult to view certain websites, such as Starfall without being asked to visit the Apple App Store. From this presentation, I have learned about the web browser, Puffin, which allows you to view information and interact with it on websites such as Starfall. I have since downloaded this app and use it regularly and have shared it with fellow teachers.

The fifth presentation on night four of our class was presented by Victor, Janice, and Sheri and was on the topic of executive functioning. This presentation covered many apps that I can be used by teachers and students to help create an organised learning and working environment. What made this presentation interesting is that it covered apps that could be used for emotional control that would be relevant for teachers working with students with Autism and ADHD. I really found the idea behind the Shredder app interesting. This could be an interesting tool to get students thoughts down and clear them once they have sorted them out.

The last presentation entitled, “Exciting New Apps for LD,” by Dawn shared a powerful video about a student with dyslexia. The video shared a firsthand experience of a student’s journey through the education system with a learning disability and how she felt about learning outside of the regular classroom. Along with the apps highlighted in this presentation, I learned that there is a Simple English setting in Wikipedia under the language options. This may prove to be beneficial when working with my students in the future when searching for preliminary information that can be used when developing ideas for projects and class assignments.

Overall, from the presentations, I took away many new apps that can be used in a variety of settings in the school system, especially as a teacher working with students with learning disabilities. I look forward to trying to implement some of the apps and ideas presented in my own classroom practice to help my students become comfortable when taking part in the learning process.  

Third Class

As a teacher, I am always interested in learning which resources are available for students with autism. Our third class gave me the opportunity to work on an assignment that would help me learn more about how to use apps on mobile devices in assisting in the educating of students with severe autism. The webinar that my group decided to use to complete our assignment entitled, “Apps in Action for Severe Autism,” allowed me to see a variety of apps that are used to help students with autism achieve a number of social and academic tasks. The webinar discussed apps that can be used to help students with severe autism develop precursor skills, sensory regulation, attention to task, communication, making choices, and following directions among other important tasks that are essential for personal growth and development. I plan on bringing many of the apps that were used in the webinar back to the schools at which I work.

The school from which I gathered my survey data for this assignment has had a number of students with autism ranging on the spectrum from high-functioning to low-function move through it classrooms over the years. For the purposes of this reflection, I will refer to the school as Lakeside Elementary. Lakeside’s resource teacher has attended many professional development sessions focused on educating individuals with autism and the staff work closely with the school’s speech language pathologist and the parents of the students with autism. I believe that it is important for a strong support network to be established in order to insure that the students’ educational and social needs are met. Also, for the purposes of this reflection, the student about whom Lakeside’s staff spoke will be referred to as Adam. At present, Adam is the only student attending this school that has severe autism. Lakeside’s staff were more than happy to speak to me about the apps that Adam uses on his tablet. I am always reminded, when speaking to other teachers and colleagues, that some of the best professional development opportunities available to me come from listening to the experiences of those I work with on a daily basis. Lakeside’s staff shared with me information about the apps that Adam used and how they are used in assisting Adam’s education. It is safe to say that I learned a great deal of information about how apps on a tablet can be used when working with students with severe autism and that some of the discussed apps, such as Proloquo2go, were also noted in the webinar that I watched to complete my upcoming assignment.

Along with speaking to and learning from my colleagues at work, I also benefited from bringing back my collected data and sharing it with my group members in this course. It is always interesting to share information with fellow course participates, especially when group conversations include members working in different school boards and living outside my region of Nova Scotia. This allows me to learn what other professional communities are doing and allow me to learn from different perspectives.     

Second Class

There are many ways that mobile devices can be used in the classroom to help students with a range of learning disabilities take part in the learning process. During our second class, we learned that some mobile devices have built in controls allowing students with disabilities to use these devices to gather information. IPads, iPods, and iPhones can be used by students who experience vision, hearing, learning, and physical and motor challenges. I learned many new ways of using iPads to help students take part in learning activities and classroom participation. I found the discussion around this topic in class was particularly interesting because iPads are becoming increasingly popular in schools and having knowledge on how to effectively use them as a teaching and learning tool will be a great asset. By using mobile devices such as iPods in my classroom lessons, I now have a quick method to helping students’ that have reading challenges access information from the internet for projects and assignments. From our second class, I have learned that by enabling the speak selection in mobile devices, students have access to a portable tool that can help them understand text and ultimately gain self-confidence as students and learners. I work with several students who have used programs such as Kurzweil in order to have the ability to read through longer amounts of text. I look forward to introducing this tool to those students, so that they can now spend more time learning without having to use a computer program that is only available to them on select desktop computers throughout their school.

Another advantage of using tools such as the iPads in the classroom is the guided access selection that keeps the iPad locked in a single app. Enabling the guided access selection on iPads before given them to my students will reassure me that they are only viewing the material that they are intended to view. This will allow me to spend more time helping students in the classroom and less time monitoring student viewing content. Of course, there are other selections found in the accessibility section of the iPad that are useful when working with students with disabilities that I learned during our second class. The assistive touch selection and the new gesture selection allows individuals that may have difficulty touching the screen gain greater control over using the iPad. 

We also looked deeper into presumed competency by taking part in an activity where we selected a video and discussed it on our course blog. For this activity, I selected the YouTube video, “In My Language,” that shares the thoughts of Amanda Baggs. In the video, Amanda shares with the viewer how she interacts with the world around her. She does this my communicating to the viewer using a text to speech program on a computer. Amanda explains that she is very much interested in the world around her and may interact with her surroundings differently than others. This does not mean that she is not learning and taking in information. By providing Amanda with assistive technology, such as the computer she was using in the video to tell her story, she can effectively communicate her ideas to others. It is my job as a teacher to provide my students with the tools they need to take part in the learning process, and in other cases, to allow them to effectively communicate their learning with me and other members of the class. From watching Amanda’s video, I gained a greater appreciation of how others learn and take part in the learning process and understand that we all learn in different ways. It is up to me as a teacher to provide my students with learning opportunities and the tools needed to express those learnings. Failing to provide my students with those opportunities, would only reinforce the idea of presumed incompetency. This would be a failure on my part as an educator.

Presumed Competency...

The Amanda Baggs video teaches me a great deal about not making assumptions about what it is that other human beings can do, think, and experience. I was amazed by this video. After watching and listening to Amanda I feel that I as a teacher I need to search for each of my students strengths. Just as Amanda uses a computer to communicate to those around her, I must provide assistive tools that allow my own students to communicate their understanding to me and their class. However, it is important that I understand each student is unique and can express themselves in different ways.

This is a great video discussing assistive technology and how it can help return someone’s independence. This video complements the discussions we had during our first class around assistive technology and how it is used to address the needs of the individual.  

First Class

During our first class, I was introduced to the terms convergent technologies, universal design for learning, presumed competency and I gained a more thorough understanding of assistive technology and how it is used in our ever changing classrooms. Before our first class, I thought of assistive technology as high tech tools, such as computers and tablets, which are used to help students take part in the learning process. I see such tools being used in the learning centres, learning disabilities, and resource classrooms I work on a regular basis and understand their importance. When asked to research the definition of assistive technology during our first class, I came to quickly alter my current understanding of assistive technology as being high tech tools and began thinking of all the tools used by teachers and students. This, of course, includes low tech tools such as hand held magnifiers and pen and pencil grips.      

The topic I found particularly interesting was around universal design for learning and the importance it has in education. Classrooms are made up of many different learners. Depending on the learning style of the student, whether the student be a visual, aural, verbal, physical, logical, interpersonal, or intrapersonal learner, or requires some sort of combination, they can benefit from a teacher who implements universal design for learning in their teaching practice. I believe that applying the four principles of universal design for learning to my own lessons, and focusing on the individual needs of the group of learners in front of me, will allow me to effectively connect with those learners. The principles of universal design for learning that I have taken from our first class include: teachers need to represent information to students in many ways, teachers must use multiple means of representation, teachers must use multiple means of engagement, and there must be multiple means of expressing knowledge. Students cannot always be expected to show their understanding for a topic using the same test or assignment. Students need to be able to express their understanding individually, using their strengths and interests. Technology can be used to assist in the learning process and help students succeed in their academic endeavors.

As we move through this course, I look forward to learning about the different forms of assistive technologies that are available and how I can use these technologies to create a more universal learning experience for my students. Resources such as the app placemat will help me select apps and tools that I can use in my own classroom practice and provide supports to my students in areas where assistive technology is required.