July 14

Taking the Pencil out of the Process by Lesley Broun :

I had the opportunity to meet this author this year and she talked about the brain and Autism. I liked in the article when she stated that teachers should never assume that just because a student can perform other fine motor activities that they can write because other neural pathways are involved in the writing task.
I'm not sure if this task is old school or not but she described photocopying a keyboard and laminating it and playing games to teach kids the location of keys....I like it though. I'm sure there's an app for that!

Assistive Technology and Writing by Deborah Newton et. al:

This article listed low tech to high tech solutions for writing. I appreciated this chart because I find so often we want to jump to the high tech before trying the low tech options.

 

 

Online webinar:

The five different slides really took me through step by step how to make a course. I feel that I may have to refer back to the webinar as I am doing this assignment with my group.

 

Compensatory Apps for reading:

 

 It was exciting to use ReadIris  in class, which is now only $4.99. That is a huge drop in price! I found it rather straightforward and user friendly. The app Claro is also very  affordable and user friendly and the newest greatest app! These two apps allow students to have access to print. I would like to see an app developed to have the text reading all in one app. I think that teachers would have to pre-scan a document and provide it on Claro to very young students as Barbra mentioned in class.


Navidys: web browser for students with visual impairments or learning disabilities. What I liked about this app is that it looks like the other web browsers. I find children in class are so quick to notice when something is different!
The accessibility options built into the iPads are so important to utilize for our students and they are free.
Learning how to set guided access for my students, and children, is so important. I think that I will be utilizing this feature. This feature reminds me of the website I use ZacBrowser on the computers in my school. ZacBrowser does not allow the users to leave that site on the computer.  I will have to check out the app for this...