Holiday activity with the IWB at John G. Diefenbaker Open House.

Celebrating the holidays the Interactive Tech Way!

Every year at this time, John G Diefenbaker P.S. has a Holiday Open House instead of a traditional seasonal concert. During the open house, each classroom has a craft, activity or performance for parents and students to participate in. This year, one of the members of our Interactive Whiteboard (IWB) community decided to share the use of the Interactive Whiteboard with visitors. 

 Ms. McGimpsey leads some students and a parent in exploring the Word Guess activity.

The MID (Ms. Binksma) and HSP (Ms. McGimpsey) teachers paired up to introduce parents to the Interactive Whiteboard. With the help of the AT itinerant teacher, the teachers created a holiday/winter themed activity in SMART Notebook, which students and parents were invited to get some hands-on time using the IWB. From the Winter-themed home page, students and parents could link out to division-specific activities.

Students used word-based interactive flash teacher-created pages. Each page had built-in instant feedback.

The activity was a great success and parents loved seeing how interactive the Smart Board was!

Anagram word play. Fun!

iPad project shared at Ontario Council for Exceptional Children

iPad pilot presentation at OCEC December 3
On December 3, Special Education Department area Coordinators Angela Scarano-Iuorio (Assistive Technology) and Jan Fukumoto (Autism Spectrum Disorder), co-presented at the Toronto Hilton at the 55th Annual Provincial Special Education Conference for the Ontario Council for Exceptional Children (OCEC).
    

The TDSB group presented the details of last year’s iPad pilot project. Eight schools participated in the project last year. The teachers, who ranged from first-year to experienced in the classroom, introduced and incorporated iPad use in their specific Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) classrooms (primary through intermediate grade students). Each teacher focused on iPad use for individual or group(s) of students, in a variety of ways. Some examples included: academic (reading comprehension and decoding), socio-emotional (social interaction, classroom integration, task completion and motivation) or using a specific app as an alternative communication device.

Teachers documented their journey by creating specific, measurable SMART goals for their student(s). They collected and analyzed data, in order to create final summaries for their part in the iPad in ASD classrooms project. The results were shared at a culminating celebration/presentation at the Board office last June. Each teacher presented her/his specific journey, sharing data and video snippets on in-class student-teacher-iPad interaction with invitees and members of the TDSB’s Special Education Department.

The OCEC two-day conference focused on ways to support learning and achievement of exceptional children in topics which included assistive technology, practices which are evidence-based as well as instructional resources.

Earlier in the week, Angela Scarano-Iuorio (Assistive Technology Coordinator) and Jan Fukumoto (Autism Spectrum Disorder Coordinator) together with several teachers from the original iPad pilot, co-presented the 2010-2011 iPad project results and findings at Beverly Public School.  Beverly students - specifically those with communication disorders - used iPads last year as part of phase two of a research project done in collaboration with the University of Toronto called:Touch Technologies in the Classroom.

Related web links:
See the website: www.cecontario.ca for more information about the Council for Exceptional Children. To see the original iPad project Prezi presentation shared last June, see the blog link here: iPads in ASD classrooms.

Learning Communities snapshot - Pineway P.S. - Using IWB in HSP classrooms

Learning Communities: Student Hands-on learning
An example at Pineway Public School

by: K. Noer
HSP/Resource/MART
Pineway Public School

Recently, my HSP junior class received a Promethean Interactive White Board (IWB).  I had never used one before but was very eager to integrate it into my program.  Even after only a month in my classroom, it became an invaluable tool. 

The students are very motivated to participate in lessons involving the board.  The students actively contribute to shared writing tasks and enjoy group editing and revising.  I am also using Read and Write Gold with the IWB during our shared writing so my students will become more competent using this program during independent writing.

While working with my younger resource students, the key words from their guided reading are incorporated into fun, simple activities such as saying the word and moving it as quickly as possible into a box. In math, we are focusing on patterning so the malleable hundreds charts has really helped engage my students. They also happily volunteer to write their own patterns on the IWB which their peers solve. There are many IWB educational activities that I have downloaded that the students really enjoy.

I thoroughly enjoy the fact that I can save lessons then manipulate them the next day.  Another benefit is collectively generating printable study notes.  This really helps the students who have difficulty copying from the board and allows the students to participate in the discussion rather than struggling to record information. 

Since receiving the IWB in September, it has become an integral part of my planning and we use it every day.  My goal this year is to ensure that the majority of the time my students are actively engaged with the IWB and it is not just supporting my “teacher directed lessons”.  I also hope to become more proficient using it and aware of the extensive capabilities and accompanying resources available.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Written expression:

Strategy: Guided writing through the editing process. The student uses the highlighting and pen tools as the teacher guides the lesson on text features of a student writing sample.

Listen to the part of the writing process as Ms. Noer and her student co-edit a document / procedural writing: How to make a Peanut Butter sandwich.

Podcast Powered By Podbean

The annotated page: How to Make a Peanut Butter sandwich.