Learning with iPads

Tablet computers are being used by Canadian teachers to help students with autism communicate, CBC’s Ron Charles reports.

New to iPads?

I’ve been asked a lot recently by a number of school heads, teachers, specialist service coordinators, and parents about the value of iPads in education – and special education in particular.

There is a mass of information out on the web most of which is very positive in terms of pupil engagement, cost, and ease of use. I’ve put a small number of the sites that I’ve found useful on the page below just to get your reading started.

I’m sure if you follow links contained within these sites you’ll find material that is of particular interest to the needs of the pupils you work with.

I envisage a number of projects on different fronts when funding is available.

Managed services may not let you connect Apple equipment to their networks. Many apps won’t work if there’s a proxy in place so be sure to check this out with your helpful techies!
Just remember that school Internet systems are filtered via proxy servers.

I’ve collected a number of links and resources here for you to get an overview of what’s available.

Great slideshares for iPad newbies from Silvia Tolisano (@langwitches)

iPads In Education- Part 1

View more presentations from Silvia Rosenthal Tolisano

iPads in Education- Part 2

View more presentations from Silvia Rosenthal Tolisano

Meet Stuart (brother to Heather) – new text-to-speech voice for Scottish education

The Scottish Government funded CALL Scotland to develop and licence ‘Stuart’ a male Scottish computer voice which is now available for download.

Heather has been very well received by Scottish learners and we hope that the new male voice will be just as successful. It should certainly provide a better option for Scots boys with speech and language difficulties who use voice output communication aids, because at present they have a choice of speaking with very adult and very English voices, or one of a few rather low-fi Amercian children’s accents, or with the Heather female voice.

Read more here.

The future of Glow……..

Autism Friendly Film – 11th August

 

 

 

Autism Friendly Films’ cinema screenings will aim to meet the needs of film fans with autism and learning disabilities. Sound levels will be turned down, the lights left up at a low level and film-goers will be able to make noise and sit where they feel comfortable.

Film fans are invited to watch the first pilot screening of the ‘Autism Friendly Films’ initiative this summer with a showing of Mr Popper’s Penguins (PG). The pilot will take place in over 30 cinemas across England and Wales on Thursday 11th August. If successful, it is hoped this will be the first of many autism friendly screenings of different films in the future.

The full list of participating cinemas can be found here and, despite only England & Wales being mentioned above there are a number of Scottish venues included.

Other Ways of Speaking

This June has seen the launch of Other Ways of Speaking, a new information booklet for parents and professionals that provides information on the different ways children and young people with little or no speech communicate, how to support them and where to go for further information and help.

Free copies can be ordered or downloaded here or at www.hello.org.uk/resources – we would ask you take this opportunity to raise awareness about AAC to health and education professionals and your/their clients.

This booklet explores Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC), a term that describes a wide range of techniques children and young people use to support or replace spoken communication. Techniques such as using gestures, signing, symbols, boards and books, adapted computers and dedicated Voice Output Communication Aids (VOCAs).

Other Ways of Speaking has been produced by The Communication Trust and Communication Matters, with The Communication Consortium member organisations 1Voice, ACE Centre, ACE Centre North, The Makaton Charity, Scope and Signalong. Find out more about Communication Matters and how it is supporting the Hello campaign, visit www.communicationmatters.org.uk/page/diary

Inclusive Technology – Free Support Guides

If you work with pupils who use switches it’s likely you know of the titles mentioned below. They’re all great packages in their own ways to help the introduction and development of switch skills and for laying the foundations for more advanced uses.

Inclusive Technology has been releasing Set-by-step guides for all of these packages as well as a very useful booklet on possible routes for progression through switch skills. They’ve made these all available as free downloads from the publications page on their website – here.

I’ve placed links to each of the publications on the screenshots below.

Take a different look at the BBC web through MyDisplay

The BBC have created an easy-to-use configuration tool that allows you to view all of its web content in a format that suits you.

The tool is called MyDisplay and you can read about it and switch it on from here.

MyDisplay offers a number of preset page themes suited to a wide range of potential users via an easy to use menu page. The ability to create your own custom theme is also available.

Although this is only a trial at the moment, I believe that this tool will become a fixture that will help many people gain better access to the web.

This level of accessibility raises the bar for other web developers – particularly those that espouse inclusion. I would like to see Glow Futures incorporate this level of support for the learners in our schools.

Drag & drop layouts for simple arithmetic

I’m a bit of a stuck record when I’m regularly asked the question, “What’s the best software for……?” So often, I find that Textease is my, now predictable, answer to the question due to its versatility and relative simplicity of use.

Recently, I’ve had a number of concerns raised about children finding it difficult to adequately lay out their sums. I know there are specific software titles for this but none seems to offer the teachers I speak to, the versatility to set out the sums the way they want.

I’ve made a variety of different template pages in different settings to suit the particular pupil or teacher with whom I’ve been working. You can download the examples below by clicking on the screenshots.

If you don’t have a copy of Textease you can download a free viewer here to enable you to use some of the features. (You won’t be able to hear the speech or print if using the free viewer.)

The templates allow the children to drag and drop numbers and operators, often onto a background grid, in any shape or format they wish. The drag and drop facility works well on teachers’ whiteboards as well!!

On some pages there are smaller copies of numbers for use as carrying figures. There are basic signs such as £  and % on some of the templates but there’s no end to the tools you could include for your own specific purposes. I’ve even managed to devise a way of constructing fractions – contact me if you have any trouble with this. I’ve left out a few more complicated constructions so as not to over-complicate what’s a very simple and accessible tool.

If you have any suggestions for specific or improved layouts please let me know – I’m always happy to build such layouts or help teachers build their own.

Free Revision tool from InQuizitor

Just heard via a tweet from Ewan MacIntosh that this material from InQuizitor is now free to UK schools. May be a bit late for some exams but maybe not for others.

You can sign up for access here.