iPad learning for special needs #iPadLearningZA

I learn something new each time I attend a workshop with regards the use of iPads and learning.

Karen Hart, an iPad Facilitator at Think Ahead, gave a workshop on Wednesday at the iStore on Sandton Drive about app solutions for special needs.

Karen Hart

iPad is the best for remedial teaching, because it has so many inbuilt features! 

(I believe it to be true, because I haven't seen other tablets with the same features!)

The Core Group is responsible for the following:

Local support for educators, parents and learners

• Extensive teacher training

• Curriculum integration

• Infrastructure and technical planning and support

• Parent and learner support (at every single iStore)

        Check out the iParent website for workshops and resources.

• Community of best practise

• International keynote speakers

App solutions for special needs:

Karen Hart:

Dysphasia

A child who can type, but not write.

He will type on the Notability app, and mail it back to the teacher. They could both scan their learning material, and mail it back to each other.

Apps: 

Notability

HD Scanner

Dyslexia

Solutions:

- Maths - Talking Scientific Calculator

- Improving character recognition  - Dyslexia Quest

- Zoom - a built-in function to enlarge text - 200 to 500%

- Speak selection - built-in function to read text aloud

Auditory learning

Struggling learning text documents

- Use in-built voice memo (or something like QuickVoice?) to record his summarized work 

- Memos can be shared via email or iTunes or on iOs devices (sent to iPod)

- The student listens to his summarized work

- App: Text Grabber to convert from image into text file

- In-built Speak Auto-Text (with Accessibility function) can be used here as well

Low Vision and Blind

In-built settings in Accessibility: (first place to change settings for visually or auditory challenged people)

- Inverted colours - black background with white text / with orange and purple

- Zoom function

- Voice-over > speaks every single version on screen

- Flexy: works with qwerty keyboard (chosen app) > builds up dictionary of your own words. Train it and create predictive text. Flexy speaks the iPad to you. 

- Google Maps - direct you step by step

Hard of hearing

This is especially a challenge in the South African context. (There are no sign language apps).

Apps:

Book Creator 
- Can be used to create own manuals and videos for learning.

- Custom creation of visual dictionary

- The books are uploaded onto iBooks

- iMovie (or can also use the normal video function on the iPad)

With iMovie there is an option to make your own movie or use the trailer function for                     instant themes.

In-built features:
- Mono audio on iPad > can customize what level of sound go to ear

- FaceTime > smooth communication

- Camera for use in visual learning and teaching

- The Accessibility feature can be accessed by a triple click at the bottom.

- Voice over - Change rate of speech that iPad speaks with Rotor function (twisting                               motion swipe up or down with three fingers
- Speak Selection (Choose voices)

We were shown how easy it is to use Book Creator and to incorporate video, picture and sounds. 

I have posted before about Book Creator and how great it is for learning and fun. 

Book Creator has also come up again and again as one of THE apps to use with regards learning and teaching. Specific books can be created for specific needs, and children can use this very successfully in their own learning and projects at school. With one app you are able to create many different solutions!

I will do another post about Autism and some of the suggested apps by Elschen Kluge next week.

Related posts:

- iPads for teachers in the primary classroom - Tal Slome

- "Connecting to the past, delivering the future" - with iPads in the classroom by Joe Moretti

- Choosing iPads for your school - Fraser Speirs

Are you really blind?

We now have an almost daily discussion about blindness in the car after I have picked up The Little Missy.

I have a blind colleague that I drop off in the afternoons near his home.

He turns his head and looks at her when she is speaking, and he takes the stuff she hands to him.
He does not look blind, and there have been many misunderstandings through the years...
Like people seeing him walking around holding onto different ladies' arms, and thinking him a Don Juan... Or when he walks without a stick in familiar surroundings, and bumping into unsuspecting people.

Little Missy got quite upset in the beginning when she waved at him when he was out of the car already, and he did not wave back. I had to explain that she should say bye before he gets out of the car, or else he would not know that she is waving.

She also wants to know about the walking stick and how it works. To her it seems like some sort of magic wand. That it tells him where he is walking...
I have to tell her each time the stick helps him to know where a wall is, or where the road is!

She comes up with these questions, which he has to answer.
"Why are you blind?"
"Because I had a virus!"

"Why can't you drive a car?"
"Can you see me?"
"How do you know where we are driving?"

The day before yesterday she loosened a shiny stud from her leggings, and tried to give it to him.
"I have a star to give to you!"
"No thanks, Mieka, you keep it!"
"It is very bright! It will help you to see!"
In the end she threw the stud at him! Luckily it is small and did not hit him!

Later on she said:
"Oom J, jy moet vir jou 'n brilletjie kry!" - You must get glasses!
He just said yes, he will do it!

Going blind for the blind

I noticed a few things about being blind...
It was at a fundraising event for Egoli Blind, called Dinner in the Dark, on Friday evening.

We were blindfolded and had to eat our "dinner in the dark"!


Thoughts on being blind:

- I don't like being blind! (That's the point!)

- I get sleepy as soon as my eyes are not working.

- Conversation was hampered because I could not see the rest of the people at the table.

- Food tastes different when you can't see it.

- It was a whole negotiation to get my glass filled, and we did not know how to get the attention of the waiters. Keeping our hands in the air did not seem to work.


In the end there was a little lot of peeking happening, and we had great fun!

It made me aware of how difficult it must be to be in perpetual darkness, and to negotiate your way in a visual world.

I work with a blind colleague, and he makes it seem so easy!
He does not see anything as a barrier.
When something has to be done, he is off with only his walking cane in his hand!

Hats off to all the blind people who "see" and do everything!


I am copying the Mission of Egoli Blind, who are mainly operating in the southern Gauteng area of South Africa. They are on Facebook as well: Egoli Blind.

"In order to achieve its vision Egoli Blind provides the following to its members as well as the visually impaired community within its area of operation:

o Support to recently blinded people;o Assistance to visually impaired people with reference to job placement and the improvement of working conditions.o Advise people of and refer where necessary to rehabilitation facilities.o The collection and dissemination of information relevant to visually impaired people.o  Creating awareness among visually impaired people of the services provided by Blind SA i.e.:

•  Braille training;
•  Literature;
•  Study bursaries;
•  Loan facilities;
•  Education;
•   Employment and careers;
•   Advocacy;
•  Blindness-related information;

o Orientation and mobility;

• Support to parents of visually impaired children ‘and’ visually impaired learners relating to educational matters;
• Support to visually impaired senior citizens;
• A forum for networking among visually impaired people;
• Creating an awareness among the sighted public of blind people and blindness-related matters"

Bubble brain strikes again

I’ve done it again. It is not funny anymore. I dropped my blind colleague off in the wrong street this afternoon. I must get my brain cells back (it’s been long enough after the baby), or I am going to do some serious damage. Johann asked me to drop him off in the afternoons. His wife started to work half-days, and she is at home already when we go home. I pick Mieka up at the crèche, and then I only have to make a slight detour to drop him off at the corner of the street where he stays in a townhouse complex. We were chatting on the way home, and it was only the second time I drove the new route. In my defense, I am terrible with roads. It was a bit strange that I drove into a dead-end street after I dropped him(Johann’s street, duh!), but it was only ten minutes later when it still bothered me that I phoned him. He was laughing and saying that his wife was on her way to pick him up. It seems nothing fazes him, ever… He realized quite soon he was in the wrong street! I feel terrible! I am sorry, Johann!