Class at a Distance

June 7:

This was another class of firsts for me. Today was the first time that I have participated in a class at Acadia through Blackboard Collaborative from the comfort of my living room.

I found that the AAC presentations were extremely well done. The groups created their communication boards using Proloque2Go. It was interesting that two groups had vastly different products based on the same case study(there were four groups and two case studies).
It is clear from these demonstrations that this technology could dramatically improve students lives. There was good class discussion on how to plan the boards for a student and I believe that student involvment in their board creation (if possible) is crucial for the success of the boards. By having the students involved you are giving them input in their voice and empowering them. Another benefit to them is that they can be changed within minutes which builds in adaptablity and flexibility. One part of Eleanor and Donna's presentation that caight my eye was the science project integration as I teach high school sciences.

Macknezie presented on three AAC Apps that she researched; they were POGO (14 day free trail), urVoice and GoTalk,

Shauna then did her presentation on her top three AAC Apps that she had researched, which were My Talk Tools Lite (full access $99.99), Smart AAC and Sounding Board.

Our next topic of discussion was Social Stories. Social Stories are used to teach social skills to individuals. They were originally developed to be used with students with Autism but are also good to use with students who have Downs Syndrome, anxiety and social issues.

They were developed by Carol Gray and have three distinct parts: Descriptive sentences, perspective sentences and directive sentences.
Descriptive: contain information about a specific social setting or situation
example: At school, most students go to the cafeteria for lunch.

Perspective: these sentences describe the internal states of other people
example: Students like to eat with other students. Everyone likes it when each student only touches their food.

Directive: This sentence provides information on what the student needs to do to have succes in the situation.
example: When I eat, I will touch only my food.

The last part of the day was using iMovie. Here is my list of 10 ways I could incorporate iMovie into my classroom, if we had access to iPads.

1. role playing
2. photo essays
3. instructional videos (based on procedural writing)
4. book trailers
5. Drama production trailers
6. science experiments
7. story telling
8. field trips
9. reflections
10. News reports