Perhaps the most important message from today's class is that our time is important. We all know that of course, yet as a teacher I (and I know most of my colleagues) often feel the need to spend a lot of extra time "reinventing the wheel" so to speak. In the age of technology we should learn how to effectively use it to best manage our time and meet the needs of our students without pushing ourselves beyond our limits and neglecting our personal lives.
We took a look at Kurzweil as an example. In order for a teacher to prepare 3 sheets of work for a student to use that teacher has to find the material, scan it, save it, email it and upload it to the Kurzweil system. Each and every time they want a student to use Kurzweil for a reading/writing task. Make no wonder this program is often forgotten about (intentionally or not!) Why not use Scan to PDR and a reader on an iPad - eliminating multiple steps to arrive at the finished product for student use.
Discussing the use of Board Maker and the Picture Exchange Communication System highlighted further time related issues that many teachers encounter as these programs are both popular within our board. I discovered, through or class discussion, that to create individual cards it can take up to 15 minutes (find, copy, laminate, cut, add velcro). In order to develop a communication device that would allow a student to use for adequte communication this process would take an individual teacher hours, if not days, of work. Why not use Proloquo2go which allows for quicker development of communication boards that can be saved and used for other students if the needs match.
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