This week we had 2 very well done class
presentations on webinars. The first
presentation was on Social Skills and Autism.
As soon as I saw this presentation, I was very excited. Several years ago, I attended a 2 day
workshop on the Hidden Curriculum. The
speaker said at one point that social niceties and protocol fall on society
like raindrops; it seems to be something that most of us intrinsically
know. For those people with autism, it’s
like they are standing under an umbrella.
I thought this was an amazing analogy and it has stuck with me since I
heard it. It is up to us as educators to
teach these social skills because as students with autism get older and do not
understand what is and isn’t acceptable behaviors in public, they stand more on
the fringe of society. I bought the book
from the conference that I attended called the Hidden Workshop and have used it
myself over the years and have also shared it, for students with autism. I found it a great conversation tool with my
class as a whole, using it during my Health lessons. When I heard that there is an app for the
Hidden Curriculum, I was really excited because I found the book to be an
excellent resource for any teacher. I
checked it out in the App store and discovered that there is an app for kids,
as well as an app for teens and adolescents.
I’m including the links- definitely worth checking out!
The Hidden Curriculum for Teens
and Adolescents app: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/hidden-curriculum-for-adolescents/id351227770?mt=8
The Hidden Curriculum for Kids
app:
I also found this website during
my searches: http://a4cwsn.com/. It’s a website that previews apps for
students with special needs. There are
some that we have discussed in our classes, but there are also a lot of new
ones. What I really liked is that they
preview several for teens. I’ll be
honest- as I’m an early elementary school teacher, I have looked at and thought
mostly about apps for this age group. It
wasn’t until Wanda mentioned about apps for teens that I realized we’ve
primarily looked at apps for earlier learners.
This website seems to have many apps for older students.
During the surveys presented from
both groups, I was really shocked as to the lack of training and technology
that many schools have. I was floored
that in the last group, a combined 88% of staff indicated that they had little
to no training on technology. As well,
one teacher stated that there were no laptops at her school, which blew me
away. After listening to these survey results,
I thought about my own situation and how fortunate my staff and I are to be in
such a technology-rich school. Every
classroom has at least 5 computers, one document camera, and an LCD projector
mounted. Our school has close to 20
laptops available for all teachers to access.
There is an iResponse kit in the office, as well as a class set of voice
recorders. There are 2 smartboards and 3
mimeos and as a staff, we are all willing to share this technology. There are 5 iPads in the school and again, as
a staff, we share when someone would like to use one. As a group, we are always sharing something
that we have discovered and think that someone else may be able to use. As a school, we are creating a folder on our
shared drive of apps that all of our staff can access. During our weekly PLC meetings, we are now
sharing ‘apps of interest’. After
listening to my colleagues talk about their schools, I was reminded of how
lucky I am and what a wonderful staff I have to work with.
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