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.