In the up coming months we hope to be exploring the use of iPods and iPads in a variety of Special Education settings. We have begun to put together a list of Apps we would like to try. Though I can visit the app store and read a variety of web pages we are really looking for information from people who have taken them for a run. If you have any apps you would like to share please add them…
I have been asked to develop a curriculum for a 40 hour course addressing Universal Design in Learning and Assistive Technology. The course is to address the basic principals of the two concepts, what they are, what they are not and examples of best practices. The participants will primarily be middle school level general and special education teachers. Their curricular area is math. Though we can branch out into other curricular areas and age groups this is where the major…
I am currently teaching a graduate course – Differentiating Instruction with Technology. The participants are very creative and enthusiastic. I have just been reviewing the first set of projects and I am very impressed. I hope at the end of the course to share some of the projects, activities, lessons and learning resources they have created on the district website and my resource wiki. In the mean time I wanted to share two tools that are making their ways around…
I while back my district along with many others in MA participated in a CAST grant to look at UDL (Universal Design for Learning) One of the principle tools we used was book builder, CAST has now placed this on-line for others to use. I really recommend a look. Related to that is a collaborative Internet project focusing on UDL. The Ladybug project by Susan Silverman is looking for participants. Please stop by and see if you might be interested….
A large portion of the participants in our little blogging experiment are special education teachers, at the elementary level. I am looking for resources I can direct their way, specifically blogs and wikis. The links below are from Special Education Bloggers, please comment and let me know of others. I know there are some great resources out there. Mechelle DeCraene in an email offered to lend a helping hand to our participants. Karen Janowski is an assistive technology consultant and…
In the spirit of universal design I have created a free Talkr account which allowed me to install a Talkr plugin. This plugin turns my blog posts to mp3 audio files. It is a computer generated voice but is not to bad to listen to. This allows people to subscribe to the audio feed, and listen to them on their mp3 player, or right from the blog post. This is a pretty amazing tool. Let me know what you think.
So how do you give more swings at the bat? Most of my teaching experience has been at the middle school level with some high school teaching mixed in for good measure. I have had little experience as a teacher in the elementary level. So I will offer some ideas at the MS and HS level if you have some suggestions at the elementary level, I would love for you to share them. If we had all the time in…