I've come to the second part of this course with lots more knowledge and much fancier equipment! It was funny looking around the room at how many people had purchased/borrowed iPads this time around as opposed to the very few who had them in the summer. I now have an iPad and an iPhone and am excited to learn even more about what powerful tools they will be for teaching and learning.
I'm especially looking forward to the case study assignment we'll be required to complete. I have a student in my class who has Cerebral Palsy, and he is supposed to get an iPad with Proloquo2Go on it in February. Right now communication is a big challenge as he is largely non-verbal and uses a communication board (with a rather limited selection of symbols) to participate in class. We know that he has great comprehension, and having the iPad to communicate with will open up a world of possibilities in terms of him being able to really show what he knows.
Watching the video about Sue Rubin reinforced how important
it is to have communication devices that allow everyone to have a voice. We
discussed in class some of the limitations of the device Sue was using, and
it’s amazing how far we’ve come with this type of technology. As cumbersome as
her augmentative communication device was, she was able to do so much more with
it than if she didn’t have it. Sue’s story was as heartbreaking as it was
inspiring, in that she went so long without any sort of voice, and was still
trying to come to terms with what was happening in her own mind during the
years before she had a communication device. Sue’s story also helps illustrate
the point of presumed competency, a term I have the feeling we’ll be exploring
much more in this course. For many years of her life people made assumptions
about her mental capabilities, using tools to assess her intelligence that were
constructed in such a limited way that it wasn’t possible for her to show her
abilities. When Sue was finally given the chance to prove her competency with
the proper assessment tools, she showed that she is very bright. We should be
making this assumption about all of our students, especially those with
disabilities.
Here’s a clip from Autism is a World:
I really enjoyed making an iMovie trailer with Makiko. It was a great chance for us to get to know each other. Although we were a bit rushed in the end, I feel like I got to know this app well enough so that I would feel comfortable using it with students, and I’m excited about that. It’s a wonderful tool for students to express their ideas and creativity in a new and fun way. I even got my father to download it to his iPad mini so he could make movies with my niece, Ryelyn :)
Speaking of my father, he happened to show me this TED Talk on Friday night before our class, and I thought it was pretty neat. How cool would it be to have these tiles in the classroom? As you can see, there is a whole lot of potential in how they can be used as learning tools.
