Day 6 - Diving into more Task Analysis and the Reading Process

Today, we started with a task analysis of what to do with a runny nose! Ha! I have never thought about what my brain was doing when I had to blow my nose. I was glad for this activity, because it helped with my understanding of creating a task analysis! I haven't done one before, so it was helpful! I am still struggling with completing my task analysis of the reading process. I don't think I am going into enough depth. Hopefully looking at the different apps will help me add more components to my task analysis.

Our next order of business was to watch The Secret Life of the Brain (Here's a link to it on PBS) http://www.pbs.org/wnet/brain/

Highlights from the video:

• Reading is sophisticated coordination
• It becomes an automatic process when we are older
• Reading and knowing the alphabet access two different parts of the brain
• People just learning to read have to:
• Focus attention
• Capture visual representation
• Send it to place in the brain where letters map to sounds
• The letter is articulated
• Dyslexia:
• The video shows a child reading words and he is very frustrated and the words get more complex
• Very intelligent but difficulties learning to read
• Inability to learn to process written language but with adequate skills in other areas
• Part of the brain not active to connect sounds to letters
• Learn differently
• A helpful program can slow down the ability to articulate sounds and give conscious attention to what they feel when they say different sounds

The last part of class was spent.....wait for it......SHOPPING! :) We spent a while shopping in the app store for apps that help students with the reading process. I was overwhelmed with the number of apps there were to assist children who need help with different areas of the reading process. The process utilizes so many different areas of your brain!! WOW! We are going to insert the apps into our Reading Task Analysis, and I will load the finished project tomorrow! Stay tuned!

Day 5 - More Fun with Apps

Our class watched webinars yesterday about different Assistive Tech apps and chose apps that we felt would be useful to use in our classrooms. Here are the highlights!

• Executive Function Apps: Check out the following blog, which highlights apps to use with children who have problems with their executive functioning: http://tarahgarybevnancy.blogspot.ca/

• Apps for Reluctant Writer's: This was the webinar that my group watched, check out our PowerPoint for some great apps!! (Thanks Mary for sharing how to embed PowerPoint Presentations!) :
  

  Apps for Reluctant Writer's
  

  View more presentations from laceyjojo15.

• New Apps for LD - Reading Comprehension (speech selection, different levels of reading, versatile-different subjects), Mastering Sight Words (context and recognition, maximizes word exposure), 7 Notes Premium (can add images with text, word prediction, spell check, edit text, add visuals, cannot transfer data from word), Tools4students (supports students written input, graphic organizers, only available for IPAD), AppWriter Us (supports both reading(input) and writing(output), great for students with dyslexia or visual processing issues.

• Great video to show how people with dyslexia see print :

• Top Free Apps in Special Education - Who doesn't like free? Some people say that you get what you pay for, but these Apps are GREAT! Some great ones that were highlights are: Dragon Dictation, MathTappers and Settings! Look to the right of my blog for brief descriptions of these Apps! Here is a demo on how to use Dragon Dictation:

• Apps for Reluctant Reader's - StoryBuilder (Create your own book by answering question prompts and publish to iBooks), Vbookz (text to speech and voice reader), ABC Pocket Phonics (teaches sound letters and how to blend sounds, letters are grouped by frequency). Here is a demo on Vbookz:

Still to come: My Task Analysis of the reading process!! Check out tomorrow's blog to see my finished product created in Inspiration!

Day 4 - Apps for Reluctant Writers

What a wonderful webinar! I think this course should be part of a Bachelor of Education program because all of these apps that we are learning about are UDL. The are engaging and interactive and I only wish that this technology existed when I was going through the school system.

I watched a webinar on reluctant writers with 3 of my classmates, and the apps we chose as being the most useful in our classrooms are: Pictello, Strip Designer, Instant Poetry, DocsToGo and Writing Toolkit. Check out our PowerPoint:

For those teachers who do not have access to Ipod or IPad, the following is a link to useful websites that can be accessed from any computer:

http://edtechideas.com/2012/02/21/8-sites-for-reluctant-writers/

Day 3 - Summer Institute

We started off the day with a presentation from Phil and Diane Ferguson. We are taking a course from them right now, so it was nice to be familiar with the speakers.  Their presentation started off by asking people to think of 3 adjectives that describe parents that have children with disabilities. The audience, that I think was made up of mostly graduate students, responded with words like: overwhelmed, stressed, tired, concerned, strong, involved, resistant, and one responded that they were no different that other parents. It was an interesting exercise because many of the people came up with words around the theme of being overwhelmed. I thought that was interesting. Consider the following video that was shared by a classmate:

The message of their presentation focused on the importance of the relationship between families, schools and community. As teachers, we need to acknowledge that when parents come into the school, they are entering with many different “ghosts” or stories, and to recognize that everyone has a different background.

Parent involvement in schools traditionally meant that they would come in for concerts, festivals, parent-teacher, etc, but that was not always successful because it met the needs of the students and the schools, but not necessarily the families and community. This is because the transfer of information usually only moved one way. We have to work hard as teachers to create a welcoming atmosphere and keep the lines of communication running both ways so we can keep families involved in the school community.

The second presentation tied into this idea. Karen Dyke told a story about having to move a whole school of children to a different location on the other side of town. There was huge parent involvement at the original school site, so the assumption was that when they moved, the community involvement would follow. The new school was only 2-3 km away from the original site, but that proved to be too far of a move for many community members, and the involvement greatly diminished. Administrators and teachers could not understand why the parents stopped coming in, but eventually realized that the move proved to be too far and inconvenient for many parents. (No car, no public transit, out of the way for other to drive them). It was a wake up call for me, and I realized it is critical to consider location, and it can limit access.

Karen also dicussed some other key points about major shifts in Nova Scotia over the past 15-20 years:
GCOs and SCOs for each grade level....outcomes and standards.
The basis for these outcomes are not local or central, but more universal.
The world is shrinking, and we can easily access so much more than we could 20 years ago. The world is at our fingertips!

Day 2 - Alternate Ways of Accessing Information

We started today’s class learning about something called QR codes. I had no idea what they were, but now realize that they are everywhere. I recall seeing them at Tim Horton’s, in magazines and even on the side of a bus! QR codes are small representations of a lot of information, and this can be a great tool for the classroom. A teacher could create a QR code from a website, article, or even a series of things, and all the student has to do to access the information is scan the code! Easy as 1-2-3! Follow the link below for a "How to" generate, scan and use QR Codes!

How to Use QR Codes in Classrooms 

A very interesting question was asked in class today: Should parents be required to purchase technology for their children to use in school, or should the School Board provide children with the newest technologies? One of my classmates was frustrated when her son came home and asked for a IPOD because they were using them in class. Not every family has the money to purchase this type of technology, and if the teachers are using them in the classroom, the technology should be available to the students. We did not dive into this debate today, so stay tuned for the debate in a later post!

We spent the latter part of the class doing a reading task analysis. I found this task difficult. We were asked to read a passage from a journal, and analyze what we were doing at every point of the process. My initial thoughts were that you have to look at the passage, so sight would be the first component to reading. From there, we need to recognize letters, know which sounds match each letter, and be able to string a series of sounds together to create words, sentences and paragraphs. After working on this with a partner, we started discussing as a group, and it made me realize the complexity that is involved with the reading process.

Before a student even looks at a page to start reading, environmental factors must be considered: getting comfortable, noise, distractions, self-regulation. There are also emotional factors to consider, as well as nutritional components.  In short, the students must be able to attend to the task because in the words of Barb Welsford, “Attention is the gateway to learning”. Our long term memory reminds us to start reading from the top left hand corner of the page, and move left to right, top to bottom. We have etched these patterns in our brains. Recognizing that we are looking at letters, and they are mapped to sounds are all part of our long term memory. Memory plays a major role in the reading process; it all comes back to brain processing.

So, what does all of this mean for our students? What if a student can memorize words, so teachers think he is a good reader, but as soon as he is presented with an unfamiliar word, he is unable to decode it? Many times, students fall through the cracks. Children that can memorize well instead of learning to decode can sometimes trick us, and we don’t realize the skills they are using to read. What happens if a student has difficulty reading? If a student has a difficult time extracting information because he can’t decode the information, as teachers, we have to be able to allow him access to information in another way; this is where Assistive Technology comes in to play.

New learning requires selective attention and the recall of information that relies on the electronic activity of neurons. We have to give our students the tools to be successful! We can't expect that they are all going to learn in the same way, so we need to treat them as individuals. I would love to be the monkey...

Day 1 - Having Fun with the IPADS!

Today we had the opportunity to play around with the IPADS and explore many different Apps that would be useful to use in class. They are not only for children with disabilities, but are considered UDL (Universal Design for Learning) because everyone can use them! They help to create a truly inclusive classroom.



We explored an App called PicCollage, and here are a list of ways that it can be incorporated into the classroom:

1. Journaling
2. Stories

3. Create a collage as if they were a character in a story

4. Sequencing of a story

5. Creating timelines

6. Creating an autobiography

7. Creating a book

8. Research project with pictures

9.  Visual display of portfolio

10. Class photos

 We also had the opportunity to explore an APP called Book Creator, which is an excellent app to allow students and teachers to create books to share. You could also share your collage and create a book with the collages! Below is a link that shows how to use PicCollage!

We also looked at the meaning of "disruptive technology" which means that one established technology gets replaced unexpectedly with a new technology. It seems ironic that they use the term "disruptive". While it is disrupting the established technology, if it is replaced with something better, I feel like they should use the term "improvement" technology.

We also dove into the topic of Convergence of Technology....but this website can explain it better that I can! http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-technological-convergence.htm