Learning Styles

Last week I had the pleasure of attending the Closing the Gap conference. It is a conference that is held every year in Minneapolis to help bring the latest and greatest technology to the hands of people with disabilities. At the rate that technology is changing I'm sure I could attend every year and learn something new.

This time I attended a talk on the Struggling Student. Here are a few of the items/software that they demonstrated.

Livescribe a pen-like device that uses special paper and audio to help with notes. You can even print on the paper and make a quick and easy communication sheet. Great for kids that are having trouble writing down notes quickly.

Flip Camera a handheld video camera that is so easy to use. It would be a great device for therapists to use to communicate to parents/caregivers. You take a quick video from a therapy session and upload and e-mail it out in under 5 minutes! Kids can easily use this device to record notes from a field trip or help supplement a report. Very cool.

Clicker 5 software program that is very easily modified and implemented into a student's school work. It can be shared between student and teacher to communicate homework and comment on progress. It has a paint program for kids to add their own art work onto a word-based assignment. The program utilizes word banks and word prediction to support a learner. There is also some eBooks that can be uploaded and used within the program. From my impression it seems very capable of individualizing for a single student's needs as well as diversifying to meet the needs of a whole classroom.

Another resource that I recently discovered is Bookshare. It's free to those that have a disability that impairs their ability to read or learn. We have been able to download a couple of popular titles: Junie B. Jones, and Arthur The book then stays on our computer and Claudia can use the text-to-speech software to have the book read to her as she follows along.

I won't say much about the iPad touch because most of you already know how amazing the technology is there. What I really love is that there are apps and apps that are cheap, and easy to try. Amazing.

There was much more but that is my limit for the day.

This photo is from this morning. Claudia plucking away at the keyboard. She is trying to use her spelling words in sentences. Eloise is more than eager to help.

Our Public Library has a program that brings together readers and dog listeners. Claudia and Eloise were lucky enough to have a chance to participate last week. It was very motivating to read to the dogs. The dogs did a fabulous job of listening. Thanks Cricket and Kali!