Sunday, October 28, 2007

Using Technology to Show Learning & Improve Output

I work as a support teacher for students with challenging behaviours; several of them also have a learning disability and two of them do not yet have the self-control or motivation needed to attend school.

I'm teaching students to use various programs to produce their assignments (ex. Kenote, Inspiration), am looking for ways that students can complete paper and pencil assignments on the computer (ex. using a template to produce a title page) and am exploring ways to communicate with students off campus. Also,
I am looking for websites that include activities that will support a student's progress towards an IEP objective or ILO.

I finally have a system to
record and organize my research of websites; I'm using Google Notebook and del.icio.us --- neither with great proficiency. I feel like I've wasted so much time because I wasn't making notes about the web pages and then would forget what was so good about them or I would lose track of good sites going between different computers I was using and I have spent way too much time wandering off on interesting tangents.

I'm not sure about the best way to send assignments, receive completed assignments and communicate with students off campus. I'd like to be able to send an assignment, have the student and I looking at the same screen (showing the assignment) and talk with each other about the assignment and am not sure how to go about that. I'm checking out Google Docs, Skype and Elluminate Live.

1 comment:

James Klassen said...

Jan ... this looks really interesting with a lot of "connections". I agree that some learners just need another way to do things ... have you thought of using a CMS (Content Management System - like Moodle) to distribute assignments and give the students a place to comment and submit? First class would work to a degree with shared document folders and conferences. I like the use of Google docs ... I am looking forward to seeing what direction this takes you.