I’m going to post my second assignment here but I realized tonight that I could have a documents gadget and post them there. I may do that when/if time permits.
This past year “Danny”, who has a severe learning disability, came to me daily for intensive resource and was also on the SLD caseload (his second year). He has made great progress with this support. Although I won’t be teaching Danny next year I emailed his LD specialist last night and told her about ipod touch and how it could help him.
Danny is a tall handsome 14 year old boy who will be in Gr.9 in September. At his last PPT meeting we discussed the possible need for an IPP as his learning gaps are closing but his academic achievement is still well below grade level. It is feared that he is near the point of not being able to meet outcomes even with adaptations and intensive support. The team decided that it was not yet time for an IPP but we would investigate others strategies to support Danny’s learning.
Strengths:
Good receptive/expressive language
Uses verbal skills to solve problems
Hands-on/Auditory learner
Manipulatives/discussions preferred
Able to apply great general knowledge
Challenges
Very weak phonemic awareness
Weak automaticity – word recognition/retrieval
Severe visual perceptual difficulties
Visual-motor integration delayed
After my initial frustrations with going into the Apple site instead of using the itunes download, I was able to find lots of great apps for programming with Danny. It was difficult to limit myself to three choices and I actually snuck a fourth in.
I chose the free (at least for now) Dragon Dictation to help Danny with writing. He has great ability to verbally “write” about what he knows but gets bogged down when trying to get it on paper. (His grapho-moter isn’t great either). I have been using WordQ with him but the word prediction was not great as his spelling approximations are so far off. (The SLD specialist is using the LiPs program to address this). I felt a voice to text option would be optimal but was not able to get it in place for him.
Dagon Dictation would be great for Danny. Once the app is downloaded and launched he can just press the record button and talk. He will need to verbally input punctuation by saying period, comma, question mark, etc. Once editing is complete the text created by Danny can be sent to email, text message, or clipboard to be downloaded into a text document that can be printed later if a hard copy is needed.
With his other adaptations and using this great app to demonstrate what he knows and is able to do, Danny should be able to continue to meet grade level expectations and outcomes in writing and other ways of representing. I also see him using it for oral testing as he is usually not able to adequately express his understanding without a scribe.
Danny struggles greatly with automatically and accurately retrieving sight words. This has been impeding his reading fluency. See Read Say is an app that will help him practice and solidify 220 of the most commonly used words up to the Grade Three level. By using the ipad and headphones Danny can do this activity in privacy as he wants to avoid having his friends know about his extreme reading struggles. As he develops a stronger sight word vocabulary and experiences more success with reading, Danny’s confidence and reading ability will both improve. The words are presented and then read aloud at the push of a button and then you shake the ipod for the next word. There is also an option to track progress so Danny can monitor his progress.
Danny is very interested in nature and the natural world and has developed very good general knowledge. This has always allowed him an opportunity to shine when he can contribute a lot to discussions in science and social studies. Nature.com is a free app that will allow Danny to build on his strength. He will become more knowledgeable about science and continue to shine in a content area that has always enhanced his confidence. This app will present challenging reading for Danny but using the Voiceover setting on the ipod he can have sections of text read to him. There are also apps (Speak It or Talk To Me are two possibilities) that can be downloaded to read text.
Danny also enjoys audio books and has been using tapes and cds when they are available. This is beneficial in building his vocabulary, hearing how these words are pronounced and how sentences are constructed through the multisensory input of reading along. Stanza is another free app that can be down loaded. He can connect to a wide variety of free online sources for books (I have included a list). By using this app with a text reader app Danny will continue to have access to a wide variety of fiction and non-fiction.
http://www.booksshouldbefree.com/
audio Anarchy
Aurora-Audiobooks
"NetLibrary now available thru Atlanta Fulton County Public Library
Toldbooks
Free Stories from Thriller / Brilliance Audio podcasts
Podiobooks
Complete Podiobook (Podcast audiobook) directory
LibriVox
Project Gutenberg's Audiobooks
LiteralSystems.org
AssistiveMedia.org
Stories to Go
Miette's Bedtime Story Podcast
Audiobooks For Free
The Story Spieler
Storyline Online
LearnOutLoud Free Audio/Video Directory
Escape Pod
Many Books
Free Classic Audiobooks
Telltale Weekly
New CCEL Website
The Spoken Alexandria Project
Simply Audiobooks
Free Christian Audiobooks
NAXOS audiobook download shop.
Audiobook Store Portal
Listen-Here Free Audiobooks
Thought Audio
Audiobooks.net
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