More teaching strategies

This website had alot of great information and articles on teaching and learning strategies. It even had specific strategies for special needs children with many articles to go along with them. Here is the link if you want to check it out.
http://www.newhorizons.org/index.html

Hope Machine?

In the team hoyt video clip there is a communiction device that the boy with cerebral palsy uses to communicate with on the video, they call it a hope machine. I tried to google it but I could not find anything about it. If anyone knows about this machine or finds out anything about it will you please let me know. This machine that he uses looks amazing. It helped him to be able to graduate from college and communicate with others.

Team Hoyt

This story is very inspirational I love it! You can go to youtube and search team hoyt or click on the link below . It is definately worth watching!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=flRvsO8m_KI

Teaching stategies for autism

I found some great websites about some teaching strategies that may help with autistic children. There were so many great tips out there on the internet some that i had never even thought about before. One strategy that I really found interesting and i had never thought about as being a teaching strategy is a schedule. It said that autistic children generally need a very structured work environment. One other srtategy i liked was the idea of having work stations. http://members.aol.com/Room5/strat.html

Internet Safety

I am actually really glads we were asssigned this assignment. I loved elder Ballards talk about the media. My favorite quote in his talk was when he said: "The choices we make in media can be symbolic of the choices we make in life." I think that is so true, we need to fill our minds as well as our students' minds with good uplifting things. There are so many great websites out there to help educate us about internet safety such as : isafe.org and netzsmarts. I like that quote on the LDS web site about the internet and internet safety it says: " The Internet is a wonderful tool and resource for families, but caution must be exercised in order to protect families and individuals from the potential dangers that are present online." I agree with this statement completly, the internet can be a great tool if used with coution. We as educators and parents must be knowledgable about these things so that we can teach others.

Technology for the Deaf and Blind

I loved the presentation last week on the different technologies for the deaf and blind. I was amazed at how many different technologies were available to them. There were so many necessary technologies that I had never thought about before like the braille watch, that was so simple yet so amazing. Some other technologies that I found vey intriguing were the screenreaders and screen enlargement programs. These different softwares would be very helpful to a student with poor vision.

Josh's Story

This story was truely inspiring. I love that the teacher found out what things were motivating for josh and used that to help him improve his communication skills. She started out small with the super talker, this helped release some of josh's frustration with not being able to communicate. After he felt more comfortable and confident using the super talker she found a technology called wordworm which opened up a whole new world for josh and his ability to communicate. After using this helpful technology josh began to say words, and phrases along with the device, this eventually turned into josh being able to read stories to his friends and family.