Week #14: AT curriculum and evaluation

The first paragraph mentioned that October is Disability Awareness Month. At our school, our wonderful team in the Special Ed department actually celebrates quite extensively. One item they run is the MD (multiply disabled) cafe where the students in the program run a cafe for a day. Faculty members come in during their break to purchase items that these special students have made. Food items, handmade crafts, personally illustrated writing papers, and flowers/plants grown by these students are offered for sale. Proceeds from this day go to fund field trips for the students in the program.
Next, I reviewed the lessons plans. I was very impressed. In fact, I would like to add disabilities as a topic for my sophomore research paper. Currently, they are required to write on a social issue, but I think that having them research a disability might actually help them to be more understanding and sympathetic towards these students in our school and community.
Some of the links I attempted to follow were not working.
What have I learned? I think these activities have made me much more cognizant of the difficulties faced by those who are disabled.
I will definitely speak to our teachers from the Special Education department about the tutorial and provide them links to the sites.
Lastly, I'll provide a link to the site here:

I hope others will find the site as helpful as I did.

Hopefully, this time my link will work:
http://www.librarything.com/catalog/CSLA2Team

Week #13: Etiquette and Digital Citizenship

My husband and I will be away next weekend for our 30th anniversay (it was last year but we never got away then) so I am posting this early.
The document attached to this week's assignments provided very useful sites for future exploration.
I reviewed the Digital Citizenship WIKI which listed many good suggestions for teachable moments. I was not surprised that in their survey of middle schoolers, over 13% had participated in a sex chat and over 8% were involved with nude photos. We are having a great deal of trouble in our school with these issues.
I also was impressed by the Stop Bullying website, and the Fact Sheet which recommended that students take a "screen shot" to stop harrassment or bullying. These can then be used to prosecute the offenders!
I had already viewed the completed all the classroom learning 2 activity 15 exercises in an earlier week, but it was good to see some of them again.
The first 2 links in the module 4 were not working; however, the YouTube video on life in a world where disablilities were the norm was impressive. It was upsetting to see what being on the outside might feel like.
I was impressed that I got a perfect score on the disability etiquette quiz so at least I am doing something right.
I was very surprised to learn that NJ has 17 independent living facilities! I know of 2 near my home.
I was disappointed to learn that the only Assistive Technology center is located in Shrewsbury which is pretty far from my home in south/central NJ. The company is called Tech Connections.

Week #12: Software Selections

I was surprised to find that such a wide range of assistive technology exists for those with ADD/ADHD. Although my original plan to work cooperatively with some of the other teachers from my school will not work out, I have still learned much through these exercises. My school is actually looking to improve technology in the area of special needs students and the school life skills programs, like cooking. They are going to be researching safer, easier to use and access appliances and items of that nature. I shared some of the information from our course, but they are just getting started and won't have their recommendations in place until Spring 2010.
As for Mod #3:
We were asked to make a rubric to evaluate our resources. I believe that the important items in our rubric would be cost, effectiveness/success, Number of students needing this type of assistance, easy of use, availability to upgrade.
I downloaded the 30 day free trial of Inspiration; however, I thought it was very difficult to use. Additionally, I worry about "free" downloads and my laptop which is running Vista. I have had some issues with programs like these and my laptop. Fron what I could see, this program should create organizers like charts and graphs which visual learners find very helpful. I'll keep working on it to see if it gets any easier.
When I tried to install the Kurzweil demo, it kept offering to send me a CD version; however, I never could get it to run on my laptop. I figured that I would not receive the CD in time for the course so I did not order that.
Next, I looked at all the assistive tech available on my laptop running Vista. I was shocked to learn that I could change the contrast for easier viewing, work with no mouse or an altered one, that I have Speech recognition installed although it apparently takes a while to "train" the system to recognize my voice.
I also visited InfoEyes which is a wonderful aid for the visually impaired. I have already asked a librarian a question online for another course, but this actually allowed you to set up an appointment for a live chat.
My software selections are posted in a document on our DB, but they are
PlayAttention, Watchminder2, BrainBuilder, and the Listening Program.

Week #11: Hardware Selection

Most of the Jurkowski chapters listed I had already read so I started with the Microsoft decision tree. The description is very straight forward but I found the tree itself to be really complicated. I guess I'm not much of a visual learner.
I had consulted with some of those suggested by Jurkowski, for example, my school Special Education teachers, some Child Study team members, our Media Center Specialists, and the school psychologist. She also suggested including the superintendent and principal as well as possibly a board member.
Our school has approximately 1550 students of which 13.2% are classified with special needs. A great number of this population are afflicted with either ADD or ADHD in varying degrees. Unfortunately, none of the sites to which we were directed listed many assistive technologies for this population.
My hardware suggestions are listed on our DB, and I attached a document detailing my rationale and answers to the questions.
Ironically, as I discussed in the DB posting, our special education department is considering writing a grant this year for the purpose of improving the technology available for our IEP and 504 students. We have begun sharing our findings so, hopefully, I'll have some suggestions for the plan.