Creatively harnessing ICT in special needs education.
I saw this very interesting article on Ben Goldacre’s Bad Science blog. What a refreshing idea – randomised trials to assess teaching methods. It has to be better than the education-as-a-political-football model that we seem to be currently following.
Now – back to my summer holidays 
In September 2011 we are (hopefully) moving to a new site collocated with Woodside High School.
As part of preparing and engaging the students in what will be a major change we have been finding the site of the new school using Google Earth, importing the map into Google Sketchup and designing our dream schools on the site.
We had great fun with the tools, and the activities really engaged the kids in thinking about the upcoming changes. Google Sketchup works with Google Earth really well.
Have a look at some of their designs below, which are also posted on the Moselle ICT Gallery.
I had a fantastic day at the BBC working 21st Century Classroom and students form Moselle School and the Haringey 6th Form Centre as part of our Transition Project. The project aims to ease the transition of students from school to the 6th Form centre by bringing the students together to do some collaborative work. The podcast is on the theme of change, and includes lots of vox pops with passers by outside the canteen in the Television Centre.
21CC runs brilliant courses for kids and adults. They’re all free and I highly recommend it!
Enjoy!
Inspired by Anthony Evans’ post I have been inspired to attempt teaching a short unit of work using Google Sketchup to my Key Stage 4 group of mixed ASD and GLD learners. I have adapted Anthony’s unit plan and the first lesson went down very well. The group are fairly difficult to engage, yet were completely absorbed in the work. We were amazed at the ease at which the kids got to grips with it (they seemed to find the concepts easier to understand than the me). I’m looking forward to teaching the rest of unit, not least to learn how to use this powerful tool myself.
We spent the first lesson playing around with some of the tools, and beginning designs for a doghouse. Have a look at some of the results from our first lesson on the Moselle ICT work gallery.
At risk of sounding like a 2Simple fanboy, I picked up a copy of 2Create a Superstory at BETT in January. It’s great! Egged on by this review, I used it with a group of KS3 ASD learners, who really enjoyed creating their stories. The software is powerful yet beautifully simple to use. Their digital stories can be saved as flash files, and are then easily embedded in a webpage.
Below is an example of one learner’s story. Check out all of SB’s work on the Moselle ICT gallary.
HelpKidzLearn is an online resource with some really good simple activities for younger SEN and SLD learners created by Inclusive Technology. It’s a great source of starter activities for my ICT lessons, and is well worth a look.
In February of last year I visited Ghana. One of the SEN schools I worked with was New Horizon School in Accra, who we now have an international link with. This film really encapsulates the spirit of the school. It’s in 3 parts.
Haringey’s schools are short changed because the government gives them less money to teach each child than councils with similiar costs.
Hackney – £6170
Camden – £6161
Islington – £5812Haringey – £4987
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I’ve just read on the BBC website that the Numeracy and Literacy strategies are to be abandoned. This is big news indeed for educators. I hope that this will clear the way for schools and teachers to tackle the issues surrounding raising standards in more creative and localised ways.
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