School's Out
School is out for the summer. For school based SLPs this means many things. For me it means cherished time with my family. This includes swimming lessons, horse shows, time at the lake, shopping trips with teenagers, lunches out and a variety of other activities. For most of us, the summer also includes some professional development time, be it exploring new ideas or therapies or expanding a particular interest in our field.
Two weeks ago I attended a 4 day workshop sponsored by our school district entitled " Using Technology to Differentiate Instruction for Students With Disabilities." Most of the participants were special educators and SLPs from our district, but there were a handful of general education teachers as well. As SLPs, we are familiar and competent using differentiated instruction and we hope that we can assist the teachers in our building to use more differentiate instruction, especially with students on our caseload. The purpose of the workshop was not to focus on using technology as a therapy tool, but rather use technology to make curriculum more accessible and more manageable to our students. Although I cannot share four days of material in this blog, I would like to mention some helpful points.
Technology can be used to differentiate instruction by providing visual representation of material, using graphic organizers, providing recognition, providing feedback and allowing for more interaction in the classroom. This follows the concept of Universal Design. To learn more about Universal Design you can visit www.cast.org. We discussed several means of using technology for visual representation. Some tools that I found helpful ( I am already using them!) are United Streaming, Microsoft Drawing, Microsoft Tables, and Inspiration. We also explored using Smart Boards and ActivBoards to promote interaction, visual learning and feedback. Two other programs to promote accessiblity for our students our Kurweil and Premier Suite. I know just listing a few sites and programs may not be that helpful, but my hope is that it might be a jumping off point. It might be something to research further or discuss with colleagues in your building.
The last thing we discussed at the workshop was the reality of cost and budget. Technolgy is expensive. We must be know what we want and how it will help not only our students, but many students in our buildings. Schools do not have money to waste. We want to make informed decisions. When we have all our ducks in a row, we have a much greater chance of convincing administrators to purchase useful technology.
Yes, my district paid for the seminar. They put on the seminar in house and then paid additional salary for me to attend since the seminar took place during the summer and not during my contracted time.
My district is pretty good about funding some training, but not all. One of the things I've learned is that you have to convince administrators how the training will come back and benefit the district or school directly. Then focus of this seminar was improving proficiency for students with disabilities. This directly impacts performance on state wide assessments, which is of course is tied to NCLB. Although I am interested in more than NCLB for my students, I help make the connection with administrators so that they fund some trainings that I am interested in.
Good luck.
Donna
I've found the key with new technology is to really add value for students. I co-founded a speech therapy telepractice company (TinyEYE.com) with my brother. We've found, if we can show we can them how we can provide therapy where none exists (due to the SLP shortage or location), then we truly provide a valuable service to them.