Latest Blog Posts

• IPads: Revolutionizing Learning for Children with Disabilities
  May 19, 2012

  By Suzan Mullane

  IPads have revolutionized the world, but perhaps the greatest achievement of the IPad is how it revolutionized teaching and communicating with children who have disabilities. No surprise, IPad Apps are creative fun differentiated teaching tools! But given the plethora of apps and limited teacher time, it can be challenging to find the appropriate one for individual needs. Interventionists need guides on what’s engaging for students and for what price; it also helps to know if the Apps will collect data and if they will work with existing IEP’s.

  Well, three cheers for Bridging-Apps and its creator Sami Rahman! BridgingApps is a website where educators can explore recommended vetted lessons. Rahman’s Review of Lesson Apps are not only described in detail given a visual simulation, but ranked in quality given 1 to 5 stars. Quality control counts; our students demand it. Special education teachers, speech therapists and the students who have used them are involved in assigning the star quality.

  Here’s a sample that would work well for students with autism or students with articulation goals.

  • Autismxpresspro: helps students visualize feelings on their IPad, such as happy or angry with mood based colors and graphic faces. Download on iTunes for $1.99 ranked 4 stars. http://a4cwsn.com/2011/08/autismxpress-pro
  • Little Bee Speech, Articulation Station Pro: an assistive communicative device for the correction of articulation errors through pictures. There’s even an interactive colorful game to measure comprehension. No mundane articulation drills here! Download iTunes $39.99 Ranked 5 stars-collects data for IEP’s! http://bridgingapps.org/app/?id=491998279
  • Story Patch: allows a kid to illustrate their own stories with characters and colorful backgrounds. Student self-determination skills are enhanced with this App. Perfect tool to teach social stories. Download on iTunes for $2.99. Ranked 4 and ½ stars. http://bridgingapps.org/app/?id=388613157

  Have questions on whether the IPad 2 would be a better choice for students? Some educators choose to keep their first generation IPads to save money. But an informed choice is often the best choice. Check out: http://mashable.com/2011/07/25/ipads-disabilities/ to get an answer to these questions on hardware and to discover how IPads are changing the lives of students with disabilities.

• Common Core and Worrying Possibilities…
  May 18, 2012

  By Suzan Mullane

  Today, I talked to a veteran high school principal who discussed his concerns regarding the rigor of Common Core.

  Yes, I’m a bit worried. Our AP classes and honor students will master the extra rigor quite successfully; in fact, when we conducted our curriculum alignment evaluations, as compared to Common Core, our AP and honors class curriculums were quite close to CC standards. My concern is for our students with disabilities and our large bilingual population. Obviously, we need to scaffold instruction but will tracking disengage our more capable students who are mainstreamed? Could minority and students with disabilities isolate themselves and quit coming to school because of tracking or watered down curriculum that is boring lacking in inquiry? What about the teacher who may not choose to scaffold and the kid is frustrated everyday? Now, more than ever, we need RTI and we need to make it part of the teacher evaluation process! Some kids will need cooperative group learning. Sadly, few teachers use it, especially in traditional math classes.

  When educators consider Common Core, it is wise to look at the affective domain and student project based learning. Students focus with project based learning; furthermore, the opportunity to practice a myriad of skills serge when educators offer cooperative groups working towards a common goal. Particularly students considered at-risk. Practice of the English language is facilitated as well as creative thinking, student self-determination and social skill development. However, care should be taken to avoid group stagnation. Fluid groups are best, in part, based on student theme choice. Flexible groups are not tracking and differentiated instruction does not always mean less work is better. It is about the quality of work that defines academic success. When educators think about their own high school experiences, chances are they’ll remember their own cooperative group experiences—working towards a common goal—celebrating creative thoughts based in success.

  Need to gain a fresh perspective? Read CC and project based learning under “Hot Topics!

• Apps for iPad (and a Few for Tablets, Too)
  April 23, 2012

  Taking notes on an iPad can happen in dozens of ways, including the program that is built into the device. Developers have created a wide range of programs with various levels of complexity, and complexity changes the learning curve. However if the features are useful to you, that curve is worth climbing. Below are summaries of several note-taking programs, plus a few others to make work more efficient.

  Notability is one of several iPad apps for taking notes. Notes can be hand-written, with or without a stylus. You can import pics from the iPad library or the web. Notability also lets you open PDFs and annotate them to fill out forms or to mark. Docs can be printed or shared. The program does not import video (unlike Pear Note). The features are intuitive and the layout allows for tabbing, automated lists, and “paper” and font changes. You can imbed audio while taking notes. The two bond, hyper-link style, so you can re-listen by tapping the word associated with a specific portion of the audio.

  Soundnote is a scaled-down version of Notability. It also records during note-taking and begins playing the associated sound when a word is tapped. Soundnote lacks the formatting options but also allows drawing or handwriting to be integrated into a session. One reviewer reports that she never had problems with a freeze or transfer with this program (she had that occur with Notability).

  NotesPlus provides the ability to handwrite, type, and draw. The program detects your drawing and will “smooth” it, so that, for instance, a circle will look like a circle instead of a wobbly imitation—unless you want the wobbly imitation. The program also records, matching the audio to the page of text. Two extra features are that you can write rather largely, and the program shrinks it to fit on a notebook page. You can also tap for a “rest” for your hand that prevents the screen from detecting the rest of your hand.

  Penultimate is an iPad program that that lets you make “notebooks” of collected ideas with drawings and notes. You can use a finger or stylus to do your work. Work page by page or review all pages on one screen and rearrange by dragging. The whole notebook or a single page can be exported. A disadvantage is that you need to be careful to keep the rest of your hand away from the screen, since it records all contact.

  TextExpander was developed for Mac but is now available for PCs, too. It is a “macro” and allows you to code a combination of letters to expand into whatever you may type frequently. It works in any program but can be specified for only some programs. You can paste in directions for font, sixe and so on. An alternate program is called

  TypeIt4Me (iPad, iPhone, iPpod touch. operates in the same way but also offers a menu from which you can select the macro instead of remembering all of the abbreviations.

  Dropbox is a “cloud” storage program where any type of file that can be saved can be stored and then pulled into the same device or another one at will. The free basic storage is 2 GB. Larger quantities and team storage are available, too.

  Evernote is a storage cloud that holds everything you can listen to, watch, read, or look at. The service can search your hand-written notes as well as stored PDFs. You can use the program across devices, so a photo taken with your phone can be later searched on your computer. The site offers aids to help you gain the most from the program’s features.

  FastEver XL is a program that can be added to EverNote to create a text note. Users appreciate the speed with which it opens and is ready for use. If no connectivity service is available, the program saves and sorts or sends when it can.

  Skitch is another product for Mac screen capture and marking. Capture a window with one click. Annotations can be added to any saved image, from photos to a file list to a menu, with graphics options that include highlighting and other arrows or shapes or words added to the screen. Additional features include resizing, web-posting into your Skitch account, and sharing with others or into a document. iPhoto is easily accessible, as is the webcam. The program tracks the history of the images you use and can be used easily with Evernote. A vector-drawing engine is part of Skitch Plus, which means you can draw or sketch quickly and efficiently, saving the files easily.

  Remember the Milk is a task manager for Android, Siri, iPad and more. It integrates with Google Apps and calendar. You can add it to your phone and to your Twitter account. It is a basic aid for getting your to-do lists on your tech tools.

  Many of us need an app that will help us find the best apps, but that might demand a 300- question survey, so in the meanwhile, we will depend upon our friends and colleagues to recommend the apps that they find most useful.

• Finding Inspiration in Developing World Mobile Learning: Success Stories and Lessons Learned
  April 22, 2012

  An astounding 79 percent of people in the developing world had a mobile phone subscription at the end of 2011, more than the percentage with electricty. As more people in developing countries connect online, children are harnessing the power of mobile devices to learn with impressive results:

  • The test scores of girls living in an insecure region of Pakistan saw a dramatic rise after they began using SMS to communicate with their teachers from the safety of their homes, with their parents’ permission, during school breaks. After four months, the percentage of girls who achieved an A level on literacy examinations increased from 27 percent to 54 percent. Likewise, the percentage of girls who achieved a C level on examinations decreased from  52 percent to 15 percent.
  • Teenagers in book-poor, cell phone-rich South Africa devoured two mobile phone novels (m-novels), making them mega hits. In just seven months the two stories were read over 34,000 times on mobile phones. To put this in context, a book is considered a best seller in South Africa if 3,000 copies are sold.
  • Children in Ghana showed marked improvement in their English test scores after receiving Kindles preloaded with children’s stories, Ghanan folk tales, and local sports news.  The video below explains more about this pilot project—which is expanding into an effort to bring digital books, including text books, via mobile phone to even more isolated places in the developing world.

  What are you doing with mobile apps and digital learning?

  While there are many extraordinary examples of technology ushering in amazing results in developing world classrooms, there are also other less-publicized examples of advanced technology failing because teachers and students were not familiar with it, schools lacked the resources to maintain it, or local educational methods could not adapt to it. A recent Brookings Institute report on bringing technology into the classroom in the developing world contains seven principles for smart use of technology in education. These principles are a good read for educators in the developed world as well.

  The seven principles are:

  • Educational problem first. Start with an educational problem that needs to be addressed and then assess, which, if any, technology is best to do the job. In other words, do not start with an impressive or trendy technology and then try to integrate it into your curricula. That’s a recipe for deploying technology that is not the best for the problem at hand nor the most cost-effective.
  • Added value. If technology is to be deployed to address an educational problem, make sure it will add value to other areas, such as expanding educational access and opportunity; improving student-, teacher-, and school-level outcomes; or back-office activities.
  • Sustainability. Be sure to carefully consider how the technology will be maintained over time. This includes factoring in the total cost of ownership, the ultimate relevance of the technology to the particular location, access to appropriate infrastructure, and your human resource capacity.
  • Multiple uses. Where possible, select a technology that can be used for multiple purposes. This will enable more students to benefit from the technology as well as justify the high start-up costs.
  • Lowest cost. When many different types of technology can solve the educational problem needing to be addressed, other things equal, it is best to select the least expensive option.
  • Reliability. Before deploying a technology, make sure you have the capacity to maintain it. Assessing the reliability of a technology includes making sure you have access to necessary requirements, such as electricity or Internet connectivity, adequately skilled staff and maintenance personnel, and sufficient budget to update or upgrade the technology.
  • Ease of use. Technology should be easy for your students to use. The impact of excessively complicated technologies can be small, especially when extensive training is required for students and teachers to learn how to operate them. Meeting students where they are (i.e., harnessing technologies and websites they are already using) is often a better solution.

   

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