Thursday, November 20, 2008

Inclusive Schools

Did you know that Inclusive Schools week is just two weeks away?

December 1st through 5th has been set aside to celebrate Inclusion. This year's theme is "Together We Learn Better: Inclusive Schools Benefit All Children."

There are a number of resources available at the InclusiveSchools.org website. The American Federation of Teachers is hosting a contest, "Best Ideas for Inclusive Schools," highlighting effective inclusion models at the elementary, middle and high school levels.

A Celebration Kit is available as well as a wealth of materials to help increase awareness in your district,


A wonderful 12 minute trailer of the documentary, Including Samuel, is available. Share this link with your parents, teachers, administrators, and your entire community. Inclusion is a community effort, dependent upon creating a culture that values inclusion of all it's citizens.

Is your district taking advantage of this opportunity to promote inclusion in your district? If not, I encourage you to take advantage of the resources at the Inclusive Schools site, now.

Sunday, November 16, 2008

Shortcut Keys - Pass These Out to Your Students and Staff


Efficiency - Dictionary.com defines efficiency as:
accomplishment of or ability to accomplish a job with a minimum expenditure of time and effort
In an effort to spread efficiency throughout classrooms, I offer you a "Shortcut Keys" handout for your use. Feel free to download and copy on card stock quality paper, cut in half and distribute as you see fit.

The fewer times we reach for the mouse, the more efficient we are. Spread the word!

Scratch Input: Another Method to Control Devices

Thanks to the Interactive Multimedia Blog for posting this YouTube video about the use of "scratch input" on various surfaces (including desks, walls or even pants!) as a potential input method to control technology devices. This is really cool! Can't wait to see how they use this technology especially for those who can't use traditional input methods such as a keyboard or mouse. This simple, inexpensive concept also has great potential for Environmental Control technologies.

What do you think? Will they consider exploring Scratch Input with those with disabilities?

Monday, November 10, 2008

What Did You Do Over the Weekend?

It's another Monday morning and a dreadful beginning for some of the elementary age students who walk into our classrooms.

Why?

Because, if it's Monday, it must be "Start the Week with Journal Writing," a ritual where students are asked to write about their weekends. For some students, this is a piece of cake. For others (see previous post), this is like asking them to run a mile to school - they can do it but it is painful and challenging.

So, let's think about some alternatives for those students "who have great ideas up here (pointing to head) but can't get them down here (pointing to paper)." Let's think in innovative ways to offer kids different methods of expression.

1. Use Garage Band (Mac) or Audacity (PC or Mac) to record students voices as they describe their weekend activities. Create a weekly Monday morning podcast for an authentic audience. Use the podcast to teach students about oral presentation and audience. What makes a presentation captivating to the audience? Let them hear their own responses and critique what they said and how they said it. Extend upon this activity by using simple graphic organizers to help them highlight two key activities. This will help them determine saliency - what were the two most important things I did this weekend? You can also build in categorization, similarities and differences and compare and contrast if you capture all the students' responses.

2. Have students use TuxPaint (an open source drawing program download, similar to KidPix) or Kerpoof (two free online drawing/creation resources) and then upload their creations to VoiceThread. Use the recording tool to have students describe their weekend. Encourage them to post a response to each other's pages. Talk with them about appropriate responses that will encourage and support their classmates.

3. Encourage students to use the speech bubbles found on the Drawing Toolbar in Word to create vignettes with dialogue that describes their weekend. This can be especially effective for students with non-verbal learning disabilities or who are on the Autism spectrum as this allows them to understand another person's point of view.

4. Some students may prefer to write a response. Upload their responses to the class VoiceThread if one has been created.

5. Use Dial2Do - a free speech to text tool that will transcribe voice to text via email. Copy and paste it into Word, make any changes or additions and then print it out and add it to the student's Journal folder.

These are just a few ideas to get you started. They extend the activity well beyond a traditional writing task. The point is to offer choices, to offer multiple ways for students to complete an activity as this is an essential component of Universal Design for Learning and promotes students engagement and success.

Do you have any other ideas you'd like to share? Please do!

Friday, November 07, 2008

A Structured Writing Tool - Writing Fun


Writing presents a significant challenge for many students. The act of writing incorporates many individual components necessary for writing success. Students need to be able to hold a writing instrument, form letters legibly, space between words, spell accurately, generate ideas, organize their thinking, hold onto a sequence of words and sentences....you get the picture. There is a significant physical, motoric, visual processing, memory, and cognitive load. The breakdown for writing success can be anywhere.

For students who benefit from external structure and prompts to help them organize their thinking and approach to written expression, there is an online tool that provides this. It's called Writing Fun and the site has been developed by Jenny Eather.

Although the opening screen is visually overwhelming and complex, you must check out the text categories on the right side of the screen - Narrative, Discussion, Poetry, Procedure, Informative, Recount, Explanation, Persuasion and Description.

When you click on a category, you are taken to a new Text Organizer screen which breaks down the writing tasks into parts. At the bottom of the screen are examples; on the right side, links will connect to color coded text that connect to the examples.

Watch this quick screen cast I created using Jing, a free screen capture tool to help you better understand the possibilities.

Try it out, let your students try it out and ask them for feedback. What do they think? Does it help them improve their writing? If they think it does, encourage them to use this tool during writing assignments. Give them the choice and let them decide.