Thursday's class

Today's class was a great way to end our in-class time. To go back to the ipad minis and have a free for all with the apps in order to make an imovie trailer was a lot of fun. It was hands on, creative, and useful. This would be a great activity to do with students as way to convey information they have learned about a topic. I also think this would appeal to students with LDs because it would provide an additional way to convey a message.

The actual making of our imovie trailer was fun but also a little frustrated as we encountered problems sharing information between apps. However, as Barbara pointed out, these situations force us to be problem solvers and navigate around the issue.

The in depth explanation of how to use Clicker Sentences was very useful. I can see how this app could help a student achieve reasonable outcomes on their IPP.

This class has been a wonderful experience. I have learned some very useful hands on things I can do with ipads that I could do tomorrow in school with my kids (if it weren't summer). The readings opened my eyes to various LDs, and the extensive reading and writing process. Who knew they were that long!
Also, I now feel educated on UDL and AT and will aim to incorporate them into my classroom.
It was great to share experiences with classmates and to learn from an assistive tech guru.

Happy Summer Everyone!

Wednesday's Webinar Class

Today's webinar had a bit of a rough start. Getting my old computer to join the live webinar was not the easiest. I struggled with sound and visual but after a few minutes they came together to deliver the webinar. Throughout the lesson, my screen froze, and the audio became very delayed. Thankfully, I was with 3 other classmates and was able to listen in while watching my screen.

I did find the live webinar experience much different that a recorded version. It allowed for interactions with classmates, it was tactile, aurally, and visually pleasing which helped to keep me engaged. I enjoyed the pauses to check out videos (although this did overwhelm my computer haha). The webinar is a great way to deliver a lesson from a distance while maintaining versatility in representing the materials.

My take aways from the writing process webinar:

-it is an extremely long process! The mention of the editing/revision process really stuck with me as I have always had difficulty with getting students to perform this task. I see now that this is because there are multiple brain mechanisms being used for the task of editing. Any slip up in any step of the processes (for both reading and writing) would affect the final outcome or the task of revision. I find that students often don't see there mistakes, probably because they don't recognize them as mistakes which would relate back to the brain mechanisms.

-it's important to remember what we are evaluating.

-we need to foster flexible writing.

-we need to value all forms of response, writing or not.

-there is much value in the pre-writing process (the fine motor aspect) in order to reduce any stresses surrounding writing (how can someone focus on writing if they don't know how to pick up or hold a pencil.

-initiating, formulating, and organizing ideas

-Inspiration is a program that I use frequently for my own course work. I think it would be great for a student to use in the writing process.

-clicker 6 and clicker connect $25 each

-the mechanical tools were very interested especially the writing bird.

- word prediction software cowriter

Voice recognition-dragon and Siri (there is a free dragon app)

-start to finish books, high interest, low level

I will be checking out the following apps : co-writer, dragon, cricker sentences, and spell better. I would also like to further investigate the 'start to finish' books.

Overall, today's class was great. I particularly enjoyed being able to read the chat box. I think it provided a forum where people could voice their questions in a non vocal way.

Dyslexie

Click the page to go the dyslexie font webpage.

Tuesday's work on Itunesu

Now that Ashley and I are pro's at itunesu, we were able to get a lot of work done on our course. We continued to add resources today and research material. We developed a profile of a reluctant learner, as well as organized the structure and outline of our course. We also added a section explaining the difference between remediation and compensation.

We did reference the tutorials again today in order to see how to share our itunesu course.

We also got a little adventurous with our resources and added a few podcasts and ibooks to our course materials. We also found some great blogs and other websites that would support a learner in our course.

One site that I particularly like was The Iris Centre. This site provided guidelines and a process to follow to perform a task analysis when accessing the needs of a student.

Itunesu really showed us it's value today as we now see that it is an amazing tool for the sharing of information and the delivery of a course.

A tablet integration case study

This is a great case study that captures the positive implementation of technology integration in the classroom.

•  A Learning Untethered case study offers a valuable insight into the pros and cons of tablet implementation in the classroom. The project involved equipping a 5th grade class of 27 students with 7-inch Samsung Galaxy Tab devices at a cost of around $200 per student. Though there were a number of technical issues the results were overwhelmingly positive with greater student engagement.

http://www.learninguntethered.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/Learning-is-Personal.pdf

Another assistive technology blog

Here is a link to the Virginia Department of Educator's Training and Technical Assistance Center's blog.
This is a great resource!

http://www.assistivetechnology.vcu.edu/

Day 11- The Universal Design

After reading this article the reciprocal relationship that exists between AT and UDL became evident. The article certainly clarified for me the difference between Assistive Technology and the Universal Design for Learning. Universal design for learning is an inherent design therefore considering all learners and their diversities. It is more about developing a learning environment in which all learners can thrive. To put it in my own words, Assistive Technology seems to be an addition whereas Universal Design for Learning is a foundation. The two complement each other very nicely as they work together to reduce barriers. 

When reflecting upon my teaching experience I know that I have made an effort to incorporate some of the guidelines from the Universal Design for Learning into my practice. That being said I do feel as though it has often been an afterthought. I would like to get to place in my teaching where the Universal Design for Learning is embeded in the development of all of my lessons. I am seeing progress in the development of new curricula that does embed the Universal Design for Learning however it is an idea that needs to be adopted by all teachers in order for it to be successful across the board. This is also the case in order to have successful implementation of Assistive Technology. 

I do not think that universal design for learning  can be achieved without assistive technology. As we have seen in many of the other articles we have read, assistive technology is becoming more and more mainstream. The UDL article comments that assistive technology makes universal design more effective therefore proving it's value yet once again.