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.

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.

Halinda is part of the P.L.A.N

Halinda is now part of The Mt Druitt P.L.A.N.

Halinda School is situated in the Mount Druitt District. We have a cohort of student tech users that range from k-12. Our staff are lifelong learners. We not only participate in Interactive Computer Technologies for education, we have established a record of constantly refining that use of technology for the enhancement of outcomes built on curriculum.

Some schools in the area are developing their journies in ICT and forging links with other learning communities in the Western Sydney Region. Halinda is a part of this.

The Mount Druitt Professional Learning Area Network is a project that is growing. Teachers developing and sharing ideas, building access to the curriculum, increasing engagement in its delivery and linking know-how are working across schools.

Halinda sits on the steering committee of the P.L.A.N. along with lighthouse schools and curriculum innovators. Expect to see more of this professional network of schools working in partnership.

Behaviour & Learning Project Wiki

Halinda is using wikis to develop professional learning.
This wiki helps us further establish a sharing of understandings around the work we do.

Wikis help learners contribute as a team to the collective knowledge of our group. As a resource wikis are updatable (providing realtime peer review of content) and discussable (allowing reflection and generation of ideas).

Halindatech Behaviour and Learning Wiki space

The Tech SSP

Teachers here have been busy providing in-services for other support services beginning their tech journeys. Many are interested in the lessons we provide for our students delivered by tech means across KLAs and grades.

Many are surprised by the type of content an SSP provides in it's courses.

The old Institution view of 'Special Schools' as places built around deficit is more a misconception of the uninitiated.

Our specific special school puts an emphasis on the enabling qualities of technology

and what they do and might provide for the student with a specific need.

Tech comes and goes, teachers learn it, use it and teach it. In our setting more than most we adapt it

.

All teachers in every school in the public network of schools across Australia are daily making learning more accessible to students. This is the context that a child with a learning difficulty, disability, behaviour or mental health problem lives in, a changing world with lots of learning to be done and technological change taking a bit part in that mix. Teachers work to make learning relevant to the individual child.

There are many programs that run simultaneously at our school. Like any busy school. Teachers here run those staple subjects of maths, english and science, tackle social and welfare issues and catering for need, preparing students for transition into the same world that everybody walks in, making the most of what is there.

In-servicing the interested

There are many visitors to our busy tech habitat. Some who have checked us out on the net before arriving. Hello to you, you know who you are ! Reassuring that we must be doing something right when we hear echoes of ourselves coming from people who have never met us but know us virtually through things like this very blog. Such is the connected world.

A Change in School Culture

Over the past 3 years I have been involved in introducing and implementing IWBs to the Special School Environment aswell as sharing & educating a broader range of Primary school teachers in the use of Interactive technologies that deliver Higher Order Thinking skills.

We have been recording video of the results. Review of our programs and footage show a mix of uses being adapted by teachers and students alike.

SilverBulleteers Using Tech to Teach !

Had a great day at the Connected Learning Conference at Brighton Le Sands between Semesters. Halinda is a member of the WSR PSP IWB action research project and we had a great opportunity to share our journey with other teachers and presenters. It is great to see a network of educators jumping in and collaborating.

Feedback was great. I enjoyed presenting and had a good time answering questions and posing possible futures. Well done all involved in the project !

MD

http://silverbulletwsr.edublogs.org/

Staff Development Day Term 2 2009

Support Staff, Teachers & Execs. from Tallowood, The Hills, Caddies, William Rose Windsor Park, Kurrambee and Halinda Schools all came together for Development Day this term.

Many workshops were held that catered for specific concerns and learning of Western Sydney Region SSPs. IWBs and internet based support for learning were key focus areas.

Dr Tom from the North Metro area gave a talk on supporting carers via consistent structured plans posted via blogs on the net. Mathew Dollisson gave a talk on IWBs, Intranets and Teaching Futures. All SSPs are increasing their exposure to web technologies and IWBs.

Good Teachers do good things with good teaching tools

Technology can be seen as a labyrinth for a teacher landing in a Special School.

On top of all the heightened strains of the Support learning environment, the ever changing fast paced world of technology can seem like a test. For the teacher who has to educate where mainstream schools can't cater to the specialised degree involved, a technology curriculum can seemingly be harrowing, complex and expensive.

But there are some quite easy to use and readily adaptable software tools that are very useful to the wise 'Special' teacher and even may be seen as standard kit.

Something as common-use as Power Point is a staple in the staffroom professional learning environment, but it can also be a great and easily accessible fund of daily learning and activity in the classroom. Digital stories can be set up using common routines and individualised priorities for students. Immobile and high support students can gain excellent 'click-through' reward from interacting with this program.

Publisher can deliver a blank comic book for an age appropriate activity in the savy teacher's classroom or a set of flash cards to the particular needs of a student.

Photo-story makes photos come alive for student projects. It is simple to use and rewarding for involving young minds with new ways of looking at images.

I have used Movie Maker with my secondary students as a social learning tool, involving role play and with primary students as a a part of daily routine and mass practice. Students can rehearse what they see, and the higher functioning student can collaborate with peers to generate personalised content relevant to their interests, keeping them engaged and learning as well as sharing.

Each of these software packages are standard in the DET and Special schools can use them readily for daily teaching and learning.