Connecting and Engaging

Wired for in-touch learning

Tech set up for student choices in a click through application is a straight forward thing. To bring the child to the technology and help them make contact with their learning is the vital step. You can have a conversation about a story and propose choices but as an edutecher teacher in the High Support environemnt, you will need to make contact with that child and help them make the links of cause and effect. Without this you are adding to the diverse phenomena happening in the childs immediate environment but maybe not making new learning accessible for them. The trials and experiments are incremental, it's a classroom lab. Special educators are 'breakers-down-into-steps', considered and quality steps. Before and beyond this moment of connection, the value of the learning you are setting up access for is vital. Small but vital, engaging, motivating steps are a specific goal of the edutech special educator.

Trialling Google Apps in an SSP

Our school will be part of a pilot program trialling google apps for students
and as a DEC school/organisational unit.

It should be useful, interesting, informative and fun. We need to hit the ground running !

Coming to grips with touch technology

Touch Tech Program Underway at Halinda

What Dynamic Enabling Classrooms Look Like

Communication is the primary focus of what we do and being ready to enable the student to express with technology in the classroom context is part of a 21st century Special educators day.

Yesterday we added many folders of chat symbols and sounds to our students Dynavox. A wheelchair mounted (also lap or floor restable) tablet with many features not found in other tablets currently. The process of adding pages involved a short how to with the Occupational Therapist then a lot of time with the student considering what daily communication strategies are going to be able to be built upon. Should it be dry and functional ? Should we include colloquial phrases and in-jokes ? Answer: all of the above.

The dynamic part is that we can adjust the access technology and program more potential interactions into the device as the need arises or even as the day develops !

We can respond to the students needs as the student need becomes more evident. Building resources as we go ! This is the gift of technology and the beauty of a special school where the student is the focus.

Shared task, shared ability !

Watching students at work you can see situations where a technology has a shortfall or feature set that doesn't match the student across all tasks. A student in a chair who might enjoy the IWB in most tasks, can find themself unable to reach the top of the screen. This shouldn't be a limit to learning and watching students at work you see them coming to their own solutions. Our students help each other. It's the conversations and interactions around the uses of technology that hold much learning. Beyond the tool itself, the hardware and software is a world of new understandings. New experiences that are negotiated and ways of accessing knowledge, turn taking, helping/volunteering, multiplayer experiences, shared uses, workarounds, fixes, all extend the personal social skills and social networks to create learning.