July 12, 2010

The cartoon really has nothing to do with today's blog but, being a dog lover, I thought it was pretty funny.

Today we examined more apps though I wasn't able to actually download any due to internet problems. However, I did get a chance to look at them over the week-end and was very excited about the apps I found. The language based ones I have examined so far seem more like what we do in class, especially the ones that work with words and letters which was what I was looking for. The Math apps I found so far were more practice of basic facts, however in a way I think students would find more interesting since there were little rewards and games.

ASSIGNMENT 2
The student I have in mind who could benefit from using the iPod Touch is significantly behind her peers in math and literacy and needs support in the content areas. I will refer to her as R. R is going into grade 4 and is on an IPP for Math and Language Arts. She is extremely inattentive. We can count on less than a minute to hold her attention before something distracts her. She finds writing and reading particularly challenging. She is engaged for longer periods of time when her tasks are in a game format or done on computers. She is cooperative at all time and willing to try new things.

When reading, R understands that she must read for meaning and will self-correct when she can. She reads at an early grade 1 level. She struggles with decoding words. She can use beginning sounds and tends to rely on this instead of looking through the word. Her goals on her IPP are to identify beginning middle and end sounds of words to use in her reading and writing. In writing she is able to get beginning sounds consistently and end and middle sounds (vowels) some of the time. Making words is an important and valuable activity for her to increase her understanding of words and how they are put together and taken apart. Activities involving building words are included on her IPP.

R's math is also weak though not as weak as Language Arts. She is working at late grade 1, early grade 2 outcomes. Adding and subtracting basic facts is a recently achieved goal on R's IPP and she is now starting to work at adding 2 digit to 1 digit numbers, along with understanding numbers and how they work.

The apps I chose for R are Cool Spell Free, Cloud Math and iRelax Melodies.

In Cool Spell the student is shown a picture of the word they will spell. All the letters for the word are displayed around the picture in bright colours, along with extra letters. At the bottom of the page are the spaces for the letters of that word. The student can click on the picture and it will say what the picture is. This was helpful with some pictures. The student then clicks on the letter and it will move the letter to the correct space at the bottom of the page. If the student clicks on a wrong letter, it will explode and disappear. After the word is spelled, each letter is read then the whole word is read. For each word the student gets a star. When a certain number of stars have been achieved, vegetables appear and dance. It sounds strange but it's really very cute. It kept me going to see what would happen when I got that next special star. I liked the app for R for many reasons. I think the bright colours and star rewards would motivate her and keep her attention. The fact that it is on an IPod would also be engaging for her. The letters were put in the right spaces regardless of the order they were tapped, allowing R to think about and see all parts of the word as it is being built, not just the beginning. It was a making words activity, allowing her to think about spelling words one letter at a time. There were more difficult words such as "ballerina" however these harder words were words that were easy to decode and the app provided lots of support. It was another different way to do word study and to make words, so necessary to R's growth as a reader and writer.

In Cloud Math the student is presented with a math fact at the top of the screen and several options for answers down below. When the student selects the right answer, she/he taps on it and the number goes up and fills in the answer slot at the top. The student is given a check mark if they are correct and an x if they are wrong. After 7 check marks they are given the percentage they got right. They can then tap and carry on with the next set. The student can select the operation (adding or subtracting), select if they want to work with numbers up to 10, 20 or 50 and select the avatar they want their answers to be represented in . These are things like clouds, suns, soccer balls, balloons and something I think is a flower. Again the visuals are attractive and would appeal to R, holding her attention for longer periods of time.. She needs to practice her adding and subtracting skills constantly and this app provides a nice mix of 1 digit by 1 digit adding and subtracting to boost R's confidence, along with some 2 digit by 1 digit operations to make her think. This app could be used in conjunction with the manipulatives that R also needs to use to understand the concepts of adding and subtracting. There is no time limit so she would have lots of opportunity to build the questions with materials. This app would help meet her goal of adding and subtracting on her IPP, in a way that would appeal to her.

The final app I chose is iRelax Melodies. This app provides soothing sounds and melodies so that R can plug in her head phones and tune out the distractions around her. In some of the reading I have been doing online, it was mentioned a few times that students with attentional difficulties benefit from listening to music on ear phones, thus decreasing outside auditory stimulation. The app offers sounds like rain, waterfalls, campfires, birdsong, white noise, night sounds and melodies played on a variety of instruments. I found the sounds more appealing than the songs and I don't really think R would be interested in the music but I do think it would be a valuable tool to help her focus. She enjoys nature and often talks about things she has done with her family so the nature sounds would be something that could relax her and help her tune out the rest of the noises in the room that so often distract her.

We also spent time today looking for low tech assistive technology devices at the dollar store. I found this hard at first only seeing items for their intended use. It got easier as we on though and started talking about the possibilities for the products we were seeing. I think this may be easier too when there is an actual person in mind for whom the device is intended. Once I started thinking of specific students, the task got easier. We have a wonderful sensory wall in our school made by a staff member who is very creative. She is an artist and the wall is a thing of beauty, along with being highly functional and much loved. Practically everything on it came from the dollar store. Pretty neat.