If like me, you work with students who are learning to use a mouse, joystick, roller-ball or even eye gaze, you’ll always be on the look out for motivating activities that students can use to hone their skills. IT Mouse Skills is great but hardly the most exciting activity to play over and over. Here are a few web sites hosting free activities suitable for developing and extending pointing device skills. (more…)
If you work with students who access the computer using touch screens, you won’t want to miss these fully featured programs you can download for the PC and Mac for free. (more…)
Another gem from my visit to the Holly Bank Trust yesterday, this is Khoros Interactive Musical Instrument. Eight interconnecting illuminated segments which fit together to create a musical instrument that can be played by hands, feet and even the wheels on a wheelchair. Clever software allows you to change the sounds that are played when the segments are activated. (more…)
Good to catch up with Dave Gilbert from Pretorian Technologies during my visit to the Holly Bank Trust in Mirfield yesterday. Dave demonstrated their new J-Pad device which enables comprehensive…
A few weeks ago I spoke at a two day conference organised by Flo Longhorn and Les Staves which explored the past, present and future of special education for people with profound and multiple learning difficulties. The stand-out moment of that conference for me was when Les Staves spoke of using the national curriculum to ‘flavour’ teaching activities for these very special students. (more…)
“From 5, children will learn to code and program, with algorithms, sequencing, selection and repetition; from 11, how to use at least 2 programming languages to solve computational problems; to design, use and evaluate computational abstractions that model the state and behaviour of real-world problems and physical systems; and how instructions are stored and executed within a computer system.”
Michael Gove speaking at the BETT Show January 2014
When someone is learning to scan using one switch there are two key skills that they need to practice. The first is the ‘timing’ skill. This involves the student pressing the switch in response to some cue often something popping up on the screen. In the Switch Progression Road Map, it’s described as;
20: Student can press a single switch in response to an on-screen cue.
The most common way to teach this skill has always been with software. You know the thing. A car pops up on the screen and the student hits the switch when they see it. If the student manages to press the switch before the car disappears, they are rewarded with a short animation. Sounds easy and for some of our students it is.
So here’s the thing… I’m sat in a quiet classroom with six students all busy using some of the cause and effect apps I’ve been recommending over the last six months. Everyone is busy doing their own thing. The students are touching the iPad screen and generating wonderful patterns and sound effects with the movement of their fingers. They are looking, listening and in some cases responding with smiles and sounds.
So why do I feel so uneasy, after all, I’m sat in a quiet classroom and everyone is busy doing their own thing.
Symbols have been around for many years and it’s very rare for me to visit a school where they are not using one symbol set or another to support their students. From the earliest days when colleagues used to physically draw pictures over words with pencils, the use of symbols has provided support for early literacy, communication and served as a very useful tool for presenting information to visual learners. There is a strong evidence base which shows, where used appropriately; symbols aid the recognition, comprehension and retention of words.
I had a lovely day yesterday. I spent it in the company of five colleagues from a special school in the Midlands who had asked me to work with them to develop their use of switches in school. This was a good school where ICT is used in a way which was meaningful and appropriate to the needs of their students and where possible, embedded in their lessons. We spent the morning session talking about processes… how the students used switches, what constituted success at each stage and how we might assess and record progress across the school. In the afternoon we put our work into practice by doing baseline assessments on some of their pupils. (more…)