Spotlight: ASD Interactive Whiteboard Learning Communities

Spotlight: ASD Learning Communities


The Assistive Technology team is committed to providing exceptionality-specific professional development within our SEA interactive whiteboard learning communities. Exceptionality-specific groupings enable teachers to network and learn with/from other teachers who may be working with a similar population of learners. The goal of our learning communities is to build capacity among teachers within a culture of collaboration where the expertise and skills of our teachers are honoured and used as a platform for professional learning.

Currently, the team is supporting all teachers of Autism Intensive Support Programs who have received a SEA IWB through two learning community groups – one in the east and the other in the west. Our first sessions were recently held and focused on visual literacy and the use of visual supports for both academic and hidden curriculum areas of learning/development of students with an ASD. Some of the areas discussed included; motor development, visual tracking, anxiety, sequencing discrete tasks and the promotion of social/academic independence through the use of the IWB.

Customizable sample choice board template page that can be used for students to select preferred activities, assignment choices, regulation strategies, etc. 

Sample sequencing page for personal organization at the end of the school day – can include images, various shades/intensity of colour to represent progression towards ‘home time’ and imbedded sound in order to reduce direct adult support/prompting.

Creating lesson activities
Together teachers explored sample lessons/activities, de-constructed the tools and features used to create the lessons and made meaningful connections between the assistive technology, their current professional practice and the teaching/learning needs of their students.

During our imbedded planning time, teachers used the IWB tools and features to create and save visual literacy lesson/activities to be used in classrooms – the very next day!

The first session of the SEA IWB LCs were completed this week. The next session will focus on more curriculum based integration of the IWB in teaching and learning with a particular focus on media and the use of the ActiView document camera.