Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Last Stop: Social Skills

I wish I had more time to spend on this topic but I wanted to make sure I covered the main three subjects thoroughly. While many students struggle with one of the three: Reading, Writing or Math, it’s important to note that students with disabilities often struggle with social skills as well. At my school we believe in educating the “whole child” to the point where it’s even part of our mission statement. So to me that means that even if we can get a child to read, write, and perform math skills on grade level and send them off happily to high school and hopefully college then we haven’t fully done our jobs if they are still unable to function socially. In general, I think it’s helpful for our students to simply be around each other. Some people may fear that our students pick up the worst habits of their peers but really, the opposite is true. They often pick up the best skills their peers have to offer. I think this is in part due to the fact that they see each other as being alike. It’s tough to try to emulate someone who seems so unlike you but when you see someone struggle the same way you do but also find success, it makes you want to try harder yourself.
To some extent I believe most children struggle at one time or another with social skills, especially in the awkward preteen and teenage years. But that’s not really the type of social skills disability I’m talking about here. Students in the autism spectrum or those with non-verbal learning disabilities often have a tough time making friends and in particular, reading social cues. The device discussed in this blog http://specialedlaw.blogs.com/home/2006/04/httpwwwnewscien.html offers a unique approach to the problem. It doesn’t take away the need for regular training and therapy however it does provide students with more instantaneous feedback. The device is a small camera that can attach to a pair of glasses. It is attached to a small computer and when the user is interacting with others, the camera reads the expressions, voice tones and body language of the listener and vibrates to let the user know the person with whom they are speaking is showing signs of boredom or irritation. This helps the user know it is time to change the conversation. Without such feedback, students with social skill deficiencies often are clueless about the problems. They are unable to read the cues. I’ve seen firsthand how children will internalize this, reaching damaging, unhealthy conclusions like, “she didn’t want to talk to me because I’m ugly” or “he won’t be my friend because he thinks I’m stupid” when really the problem is that the student doesn’t know how to have a proper conversation or when to stop one that is headed in the wrong direction. Just the fact that I was able to find a tool to help kids with social skills problems is promising. I know in the long run a person doesn’t have to be popular or a social butterfly to get by in life but having friends can work wonders for a child who struggles in so many other ways as well. Hopefully, we can utilize technology in the future to further assist children (and adults) in need of help with social skills.
Well there you have it. Six weeks of blog postings. I hope you learned as much as I did! Thanks for reading!

Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Tools of the Trade

Well if you didn’t like the concept of having students listen to their stories and lessons on tape the you’re really not going to like this idea (I’m talking about any other readers, I know my group mates are open minded!) I think students with math disabilities absolutely must master the use of a calculator with as many helpful functions as possible. Disagree with me? That’s okay, one of my coworkers tends to disagree with me there as well. But hear me out: Math isn’t like reading. Students CAN compensate for math disabilities far more easily than they can a reading disability. If a student can complete a problem using a calculator but struggle with out one then for goodness sake, let them use the calculator. How many adults do you know (teachers excluded) that do long division with paper and pencil? If you find one let me know so I can ask them why they don’t have better things to do. Calculators are simple, relatively inexpensive pieces of technology that were made to be used and in the field of assistive technology, there are calculators and then there are CALCULATORS. Some of these do just about everything you can think of. This website run by the University of Texas http://www.edb.utexas.edu/ATLab/Labinventory/Classroom/classroom-ld-math.php offers some interesting products including software but what intrigued me the most were the calculators. All the way at the bottom of the page is a calculator that looks essentially normal except that it speaks to help those students with visual impairments. Then, towards the top of the page is something called Big Calc which can be programmed to meet the needs of the individual student plus it is appealing to young children because it is colorful and friendly looking. Finally there are the two that I like the most. One is called the Coin-u-lator (which I’ve seen at teacher stores) and then the Money Calc which I’ve never seen before. Both incorporate coins and bills to help students add and subtract money. The Money Calc also does regular calculator functions. I’ve seen students who are terrific readers and reasonably decent math students look at a pile of coins with a look of such confusion you have to stop and double check to make sure you remembered to use American currency. So they may not like carrying around the big yellow Coin-u-lator but at least it would get the job done. I worry about kids who have issues counting money the most because I feel like they are targets for dishonest cashiers. I’d rather see them carrying around this calculator than be swindled. The last calculator I want to mention isn’t found on this site. It’s something the middle school math teacher at my school discovered and for the sake of continuity I want to list it here. This calculator—http://www.amazon.com/Casio-Fraction-Calculator/dp/B00154GSM4/ref=sr_1_24?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1208217469&sr=8-24 does just about everything a student would need to carry them through 8th grade math at the least and probably further. It does order of operations and most importantly it does fractions which I’ve seen stump student after student and tie them up for months as they try to battle through the fraction chapter. Many students at my school are already using this device which is far cheaper and far less intimidating than a graphing calculator. You can find calculators out there that do just about everything and websites that help with the rest. For example, this website helps with converting fractions to decimals http://www.mcs.surrey.ac.uk/Personal/R.Knott/Fractions/FractionsCalc.html . The possibilities are endless. All a student with math disabilities needs is a teacher who will help them use these tools with confidence and not try to convince them that they are somehow cheating the system but using a calculator.

Monday, April 14, 2008

TouchMath

Here I am starting my last week of blogging. I could try to come up with some really fancy way of saying this but it’s easier to sum it up with one simple word—valuable. I would never have found the information I’ve come to find nor developed such a sense of the field of technology for students with LD had I not been forced to thoroughly search and research the web for ideas, opinions and programs. I can’t promise I’ll keep up the blogging but I can say for certain that I will use what I’ve found. My professor suggested that we become “experts” in our field. Well I’m sure not an expert of the field but I know I am the expert on my school’s staff. That leads me back to my original word—valuable.
So I wanted to continue the focus on Math since I really only covered it in two postings last week. I came across a blog this evening that was written by a mom whose son struggled with math. The original posting can be found here http://adhdguide.blogspot.com/2007/03/touchmathhelp-for-children-with.html. The mother’s story led me to a site that features the concept of TouchMath found here http://www.touchmath.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=about.welcome&gPage=23. I’ve seen a couple of kids use this technique before to some success but it has never been one of the primary techniques used at my school. I thought I’d look into it a little more to see if perhaps it should be.
TouchMath is an extremely simple concept that uses zero electronic technology. This is probably the biggest plus because it means I can implement it instantly and not wait to purchase a program. It also got me thinking that I shouldn’t put all my eggs in the technology basket because sometimes things can be done the same or better without the fancy computer or electronic device. TouchMath is based on the concept that all numbers 1-9 have TouchPoints. If you’ve ever seen a student tapping the paper on the ends of the number, he or she was probably using this technique. I think counting fingers works just as well but kids get embarrassed sometimes when they have to count fingers so this would encourage them to use a tool that can be implemented discretely. It’s really as simple as that. I’m feeling silly for not teaching this to all my students already but it just goes to show that you miss out on simple things sometimes when you go with the same techniques and traditions that the other teachers have always followed. Here’s just one more simple technique that can be used to help students with math disabilities.

Wednesday, April 9, 2008

The Media Equation

You were expecting math? Well this week’s blog includes a special segment on the media equation (part of the assignment). It’s helpful to any readers who are not group members to briefly explain the media equation. In chapter one of the book conveniently titled The Media Equation, authors Reeves and Nass explain a concept that leaves many with the initial response, “but certainly not me!” Can you tell the difference between human and machine? Well you may think so but the research demonstrates that humans are inherently social beings and therefore have a tendency to apply human social interactions to objects that are, well, not alive. Still skeptical? Well have you ever coddled your computer when it was running a little slowly or begged your car to make it just a little further to the gas station? Perhaps because more than you may realize, media equals real life. Our brains have been trained for so long to believe that what seems real is real that it’s now difficult to differentiate between the two and we don’t even realize we are doing it. Now that I have your attention, I suggest reading the entire first chapter (it’s not that long) for all the excellent examples provided by Reeves and Nass. The article can be found here http://guir.berkeley.edu/courses/cs198/papers/mediaeq.pdf or if you want the whole book, here http://www.amazon.com/Media-Equation-Computers-Television-Lecture/dp/1575860538.
Before you lose complete faith in the mental state of mankind, let’s examine some positive aspects of this vulnerability in the human conscience and the impact it could have on education. First of all it seems that children are even more likely to believe what they see is real and apply human attributes to machines. So knowing the emotional impact a computer program could potentially have on a child, designers should incorporate computer reactions that will elicit the proper emotional response in a child. For example, a child who is using an educational game may receive basic feedback on answers but what if the computer instead played a friendly face that explained the problem and provided warm and positive feedback. Or perhaps in the older grades, the computer provided positive social responses, in effect, modeling appropriate behavior or actions. If kids are not exposed to enough positive social role models, the maybe the computer can act as the positive role model for them. Even more importantly, this could work for students with LD who often exhibit poor social skills. There is a severe shortage of social skills training courses available to parents of children with social skills problems, particularly for adolescents and teens who I believe often need it most. A digital teacher, who is being perceived as a real person in many respects, could provide the necessary training in the privacy of one’s home. It may seem counter-intuitive to teach social skills in an isolated setting but first of all, if the student perceives the computer character/ teacher to be real then they do not feel alone and second, this is a better option if the alternative is not having training at all.
I think the key is to be cautious and to help students gain self awareness of this “issue”. Too often kids get too involved in video and computer games, applying so many human qualities to animated characters that they get fully depressed when something happens to that character in the game. I’ve seen this happen first hand when I once had two students cry while playing the game Petz after their animated dog ran away. We should be cautious also to make sure we don’t allow media to replace real human interaction. No device can substitute the need all people have for true human relationships.
Well I’ve beaten on my poor computer enough for one day. It’s tired and wants to go into hibernation now. I’ll miss it while it’s sleeping but I know it will be ready to greet me later.
Until next week!

Tuesday, April 8, 2008

TEAM

After some disappointing web searches the past couple of weeks, I was literally giddy to find the website I will discuss today. It’s not often that I read information geared towards teaching students with learning disabilities and think, wow, these people get it. The website for TEAM which stands for Teaching Enhanced Anchored Mathematics can be found here http://www.wcer.wisc.edu/TEAM/index.html The TEAM project is associated with the University of Wisconsin- Madison and I cannot do it justice in simply trying to describe it, but I will try. Under Projects and Funding, you can find a good summary of the research used to create this program. One particular sentence jumped out at me.
“…many teachers of low-achieving students are reluctant to teach challenging math problems before they have mastered basic skills, which often leads students to dislike mathematics and drastically reduces to their motivation to learn it.”
This could not be more true to my experience. Actually, my fellow coworker and I have long disagreed on how math should be taught. He believes students cannot advance to the next chapter or concept until they have mastered the first which leaves some 12 year olds working in a second grade math book on the addition chapter. The research from this program has identified instructional practices that make it possible to teach low achieving students to solve complex problems. The program accomplishes this by helping kids develop problem solving skills in a real world context. Now this seems intuitive but unfortunately it does not seem to be the norm in classrooms across this country. In fact, the latest TIMSS report from 2003 (the 2007 results won’t be available until late 2008) still show American math and science test score falling well behind other nations. (http://nces.ed.gov/timss/TIMSS03Tables.asp?Quest=3&Figure=5) So I have to ask why more schools aren’t taking this research into account when teaching kids math. Going back to the TEAM program, the instructional program developed by the researchers is called EAI which stands for Enhanced Anchored Instruction. EAI uses video based problems delivered by CD-ROM to help students complete what I would consider to be rather complex tasks. I loved how the researchers noted the importance of this sort of delivery system for students with reading disabilities. Having something that students can watch and listen to eliminates the barrier students with reading disabilities immediately encounter when opening any text book. I see this as a huge step. To get a real feel for the actual program, an example can be viewed here http://www.wcer.wisc.edu/TEAM/products.html I was disappointed that I could not get the video to load despite many attempts however the teacher’s manual provides a very detailed description of the video and the TEAM project offers teachers a free CD-ROM for use in the classroom. The only unfortunate thing about this program is that it was designed for middle schoolers so it is not something I can use for my own students but it is something that I know the middle school students at my school would really enjoy so I will be passing this information on to the middle school math teacher at my school.
I am thrilled to have found such an interesting program and I hope my continued searches are as successful. I am also pleased that I now have research to show kids can move past the basic skills and learn more complex ones that will not only have real world significance but also be more age appropriate than the current text books.

Monday, April 7, 2008

Refining the Focus

Here we are nearing the end of this blogging assignment and after speaking with the professor, I finally have a solid grasp on my end goal. In my school we essentially create our own curriculum. We don’t follow premade lesson plans unless we happen to find one we like. It is then usually adapted to meet the needs of our student population. In that sense my goal is to become an expert in content area best practices with technology. I’d love for a coworker to be able to say, “I’m having trouble helping Jimmy understand rhyming patterns.” And then in turn point that coworker in the direction of a technology program, device or activity they could try. I feel that the more I advocate for better uses of technology, the more my school will see the need to improve our current tech set-up.
Now that we’ve settled that (phew!) I’d like to move on to my final content area focus which is math. I don’t teach math this year although I have the previous 3. I do miss teaching the subject because I’ve always enjoyed math and I find for many kids, it is their strength which means they enjoy the learning process. There are many however, who struggle terribly with math and whose parents shake their heads and say things like, “we’ll make sure she has a debit card.” There are those who push math aside as being of secondary importance to things like reading and writing. I believe math is every bit as important as the other two subjects.
I’m a strong believer that kids need to use manipulatives as much as possible especially in math. I also believe that the objects don’t have to tie directly to a certain math concept (ie: fraction bars or clocks). At http://www.mindwareonline.com/MWESTORE/Home/HomePage.aspx? Teachers and parents can find an array of mind puzzles that kids love. This is not computer technology however it is definitely a form of technology in my opinion. Kids learn logic, problem solving, even engineering (like when building a marble run). In no classroom should computer technology replace hands on tools like the ones found at mindwareonline. Research does indicate that math disabilities can be improved with technology. LD online always has a vast array of information. At this site http://www.ldonline.org/article/6291 if you scroll down to the subheading “Developing fluency in math-delayed children using technology” you can find research assessing the use of technology for students with math disabilities. Very interestingly, the study found that “computerized drill and practice was ineffective in developing declarative fact knowledge in students with math difficulty” (Hasselbring, Goin, and Sherwood, 1986). I hear many teachers out there saying, “oops!” and we’ve had this research for the last 22 years? Most computer math games do little more than quiz students on math facts with fancy graphics or animated characters. No wonder it’s not helpful. Luckily, I have not been using such games. Hasselbring and Goin developed a program in 2005 called FASTT (Fluency and Automaticity through Systematic Teaching with Technology) which helps students develop “declarative fact knowledge.” The resulting computer program called FASTT Math has been shown to create positive results both for students with disabilities and those without. This makes it perfect for a mainstream classroom and a special education classroom. The same article goes on to describe research in increasingly complex areas of math however, I am going to leave the focus here for now because math basics are often the most difficult and also most vital for students with math disabilities. Without the basics, the rest become an insurmountable goal. I’ll be adding this program to my list of “best practices.”

Wednesday, April 2, 2008

Response to Intervention

I heard about this (what do you call it? Process? Program?) A couple years ago and was pretty fascinated by the concept. Before I go any further, let me not assume that my only readers are my three excellent group mates. If you are unfamiliar with RtI, then read this summary from Wikipedia which does a fair job of explaining the program. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Response_to_intervention
There, got it? Of course. Now I could have made RtI my entire Blog topic and not come close to covering all the details so I’m certainly not going to attempt to cover everything today. I came across this blog http://ldblog.com/tag/rti/ which really got me thinking and I figured it was a perfect way to end my two week examination of the writing process with respect to learning disabilities and technology.
RtI is not something that has had any effect on me as of yet. After all, students who attend my school have all been identified (if they weren’t yet identified, they wouldn’t be there—it’s a school for only students with LD). I figure in the future we may see “treatment resistors”—those who do not respond to intervention. To this point however, I’m not even certain this is happening in the public schools in my area.
When I first heard about RtI the first initial concern I had was “what about students with LD that are not reading disabilities?” and this concern is noted by Blogger “JohnL” in his posting. This concern is also echoed in my experiences for the last two weeks in searching for writing programs. Finding information to blog about reading disabilities and accommodations was quite easy. There is a tremendous amount of support for struggling readers and that’s not a bad thing. After all, not being able to read can be extremely debilitating, especially for adults. It can negatively impact one’s entire life from career to family to health and finances. But what about writing? There is a severe lack of solid support materials for struggling writers and I don’t mean students who reverse letters, or misspell words. I don’t even mean those with bad handwriting. I mean those students with severe expressive language disorder, those who simply cannot express themselves with language—oral or written. Is this not a tremendous problem too?
The blogger says in his posting that we should not expect learning disabilities to disappear as some may have you believe is possible with RtI and I agree. How can we expect learning disabilities to disappear when we don’t even address all of the problems? Writing/ Written expression is not addressed with RtI and neither is Math which accounts for approximately 25% of learning problems (according to the blog). JohnL (blogger) states at the end that “there is much more to special education than the methods for determining eligibility of students with Learning Disabilities” and he couldn’t be more right. Let’s not put all our eggs in the reading basket and ignore struggling writers. RtI is a good start but not if it leads people to the false belief that it is a cure-all for LD.
So where am I going from here? Well I’ve exhausted the searching for writing programs so in my mind I’m working on ways I can do this on my own. I’ll let you all in on a little secret. I don’t think I want to be a teacher forever, eventually someday I want to write textbooks (who knows, maybe they won’t be in book form by that point) but regardless, I feel like I’ve found a goal for myself—find a solution to this writing problem and create a program that actually works for students. So having exhausted the writing and having addressed reading, next week I plan to move on to the subject of Math disabilities and what forms of technology can do to aid those struggling with dyscalculia. I hope I don’t find the shortage of support for Math disabilities as I found for writing. Then, if all goes well I will look to tie all the loose ends together. Maybe even address LD and social skills. That’s the rough plan but I’m letting the blog dictate my direction.

Tuesday, April 1, 2008

Grab Bag

In searching for today’s blog posting I found two things I wanted to talk about that were very different from one another. The first is found here http://www.donjohnston.com/products/write_outloud/index.html . This is another product that is supposed to help struggling writers. It shows some pretty dramatic positive results and I say if it really works like that then sign me up. But I’m somewhat skeptical. After two weeks of searching, I don’t believe there is one magic program out there. This one does have some neat features however. It provides basic items like spell checker and dictionary as well as a device which helps students create a bibliography (much like the newest versions of Word). There is also a function that allows teachers to track students’ needs for remediation and growth. This program is part of a larger “literacy suite” called SOLO which has several programs all to aid struggling writers. This program seems better than the one I discovered last week in that it offers more ways to assist students. I feel like this may help “unlock” some of the doors that block students who are capable of being good writers but are unable to produce because of various difficulties. I still don’t think this solves the problem for kids who simply don’t know what to write but then again, no single program is intended to solve every problem.

The second thing I wanted to mention today is found here http://ldblog.com/special-content/correcting-reversals . It’s an interesting blog posting about letter reversals. This is a problem for both readers and writers but in my opinion, more often a problem for writers. I actually have a couple of students who routinely misspell their own names because they reverse b and d. The blog cites research which suggests a method for correcting letter reversals by essentially using positive reinforcement to acknowledge correct letter formation. Eventually over time the child will correctly write the letters. I can see how this very simple (low tech) method would work. I see my students with this problem get to certain letters on spelling tests (whether a b or a d) and debate with themselves over which direction to make the letter. It’s not as though they don’t know which letter they should use, they simply can’t remember which way the letter goes. I have unknowingly been doing this very method with my students but need to work on employing it more consistently. So there you have it, two different methods to solve writing problems; two very different levels of technology.