Thursday, February 12, 2015

Assistive Technology for Students With Special Needs

Are you a special education teacher? 
Are you looking for a different and new way to teach (math, reading, writing, improve their memory)? 
This Article by Rebecca Dean will gives you a reason and a simle way to integrate technology to special education. To read her article click here. You just have to give your students a greater chance to success in some of the more challenging areas.

Wednesday, February 11, 2015

Edmodo...learning management system

At times, some of our Special Education students feel isolated as a result of their disabilities or exceptionalities. Students with a communication disorder may have a lot to say, but are unable to express their ideas. For students like this, Edmodo and other social media tools are powerful. Edmodo says that: " How students learn is just as important as what. Edmodo is where education meets innovation. We're moving to a world where you can look at specific experiences and specific students and understand what's working for particular types of learners." And i think that this is what we look for in education, simply, "to teach them in the way they learn".
To know more about how to use edmodo show up these presentations

Join Edmodo,  and become part of the world's largest social learning community where teachers, students, and parents can connect safely and securely.


3 Android Applications for students with special needs


1. Autism Speech DiegoSays: This application represents a quick and practical form of teaching your child the basics of communication. The communication is the most important element for increasing the independence and progress of your child. This application uses the basic needs of your child in order to improve his communication skills.
www.play.google.com, on 11-2-15
2. dyscalculia: This app enables you to help your child or yourself in the process of becoming more comfortable with math and reading. While dyslexia is by now very well known, dyscalculia is evenly wide spread and yet is very little known to the general public. Because of this, this app inform you about dyscalculia, and ways to improve your student's abilities in math and reading.
3. Focus Trainer: Focus Trainer is a fast, powerful game that trains your attention, a mindfulness tool to teach you about attention. If your kid have any attention deficit, Focus Trainer will teach him about attention and train him to be clearer and calmer. It helps the kid gain awareness of his attentional control so that he can use that control outside the game in daily life. 

 

Learning works for kids

LearningWorks for Kids was founded on the principle that popular video games and other digital media, when used mindfully and responsibly, can be powerful tools for sharpening and improving children’s academic performance and cognitive Thinking Skills. This is especially true for the children we call Alternative Learners: kids who struggle with everything from mild learning difficulties to diagnosed disorders such as Asperger’s, Dyslexia, and ADHD. www.learningworksforkids.com it is a website that allows our kids with autism, ADHD, dyslexia... improve their skills in math, reading, writing, thinking skills... using educational games.  Visit the site.. and explore more..


Maths-Whizz.. Fun to Learn

“Maths-Whizz is just a fantastic teaching and learning aid! It gives every student a personalized math's program with opportunities to improve understanding and extend learning.
With over 1,200 maths lessons for kids for reception to year 8, and an unlimited number of problems, children always have something new and exciting to learn! With personalised instruction and meaningful content delivered through interactive and engaging animations, learning maths has never been this much fun.

www.whizz.com on 11-2-15
We can improve student's with special needs maths abilities, in a very funny way.
Using vidios and games they will be able to like math and begin solving it in a positive way. Specially for students with learning disabilities like dyslexia, and for students with ADHD since it will improve their attention.
I will start using it, and i hope you too!!


Tuesday, February 10, 2015

Twitter in education.. it's actually a good idea

Teachers should have the skills to build their own personal learning networks to be global.They should be able to use social media to connect their students to real-world problems.
twitter in education This presentation shows the basics of twitter
and goes deeper into using it as a tool for schools and teachers.
            


Skype for us.. Teachers and students

Are you looking for a great tool to use in classroom?
Do you like to bring the world into your classroom?

Here's how:
it's Skype!!
I'm sure you'll be thankful for the Wonderful Experiences that skype will offer you!
This tool will increase the chances of success and will develop the sense of curiosity in students especially those with special needs.
Explore this presentation to view the features skype in education.. And then try :)
 

Facebook in education

Facebook is a social media tool that helps us comunicate and share ideas in an easy way. Facebook in education is a positive way to use this tool. What you have to do is to create a facebook page www.facebook.com  and then integrate education and activities to your students using this page.
I will invite you to visit my facebook page  which i use it to import some funny and helpful activities for students.
It is a helpful way to reach out your students outside class, specially who needs some extra activities. It could be useful with students with learning disabilities and ADHD which you can provide them with different activities or the same activity but in a conditioned and modified way to reach out the different needs, it's creative and helpful tool.
For additional ideas read this article 100 way to use facebook in education, And view this presentation facebook in education
Try it...

Google in Education.. google classroom

Classroom is available to anyone with Google Apps for Education, a free suite of productivity tools including Gmail, Drive and Docs.
Classroom is designed to help teachers create and collect assignments paperlessly, including time-saving features like the ability to automatically make a copy of a Google Document for each student. It also creates Drive folders for each assignment and for each student to help keep everyone organized.
Students can keep track of what's due on the Assignments page and begin working with just a click. Teachers can quickly see who has or hasn't completed the work, and provide direct, real-time feedback and grades right in Classroom.

For an additional ideas click here, and here.


Memrise.. learn in a better way

Memrise is an educational free website, that allows you to learn languages(spanich, japanese, english, french...), Maths and sciences, history and geography. Start from basics and then go ahead.
We can use it as teachers, to help our students improve specialy in languages and mathes. And you will find it a good way to teach them and enrich them with benefitial information.
With special needs also, you can specify the needed courses and levels and help him while working.
Also, using memrise you can:
1. Control what your students learn: Create a class, then add students to the class. Then choose which courses you want them to learn. They'll automatically see the courses you set appear on their dashboard when they login.
2. Track student progress at a glance: leaderboards are automatically created for your class, and for each course your class is studying. You’ll only see your students, not all the other people who are learning that course on Memrise. They can also see the leaderboards and can compete for the top spot!
Memrise wants to make learning your favourite playtime activity. That's how it should be: we learn best when we're relaxed, curious and confident, and, after all, the world is a very interesting place.
To enter the site click here ,and have fun while exploring.

www.memrise.com