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.

Wednesdays we Tech together

From time to time

you will see this sign

at our school

Touchdown !

Our Secondary students are refining their skills.
Each day the DER 1:1 laptop program provides students with a means to develop fine motor skills. Students develop these in real world learning and leisure situations at the keyboard. It is not easy. Students do have to try try again ! The steps and keystrokes are small and the journey is long. Each child has varying ability and varying need. Each child has differing stamina for the tasks at hand. But each student has the chance to pursue their choices and interests at the keyboard. It's an interface with the changing world around.

Heroes Journey

Jim is your strong silent type of hero.
A young man of few words.
But when he wants to, he can wield a gadget.

Learning Tablets

This week at Halinda we have been setting up iPads for some student programs.
Where to start ? As always the most basic switch is the on and off. This is mastered quickly by most willful learners here ! We had to soon find a makeshift hack that focused students attention on preferred learning activities. Once students jump in on tablet learning there is a lot of engagement ready to be channelled with the device. Now we move onto the familiarisation and prolonged engagement hoped for when we introduce an activity to stimulate student attention.

A Touch of Learning

This term is really gearing up. The gear we have for use in some student programs is tablets and educational Apps. Parents are increasingly interested in the use of a student's own tablet (usually an Apple iPad at this point in time, but this year a plethora of devices is coming to the market). The engagement they generate is useful to the teacher in the classroom. To find and focus on a student's learning strengths is a beautiful thing. The right device, be it a DER laptop, a mouse switch, an iPad or pencil, can be a boon to the learning at hand.