A Journey into Learning

I subscribe to Sharing Good Practice from ictopus – which is always a fantastic source of inspiration. Thanks to Howard Lovell’s article in the current edition for this resource.

Poisson Rouge is a really high quality (and non-age-specific) site. Used alongside Basicmouse it will fit really well into the SLD curriculum. There is almost no text on the site. It consists of a series of games that fit together in the most intuitive and delightful way. The user guide describes the principles better than I could ever do:

There are no instructions on the site and there are some good reasons for that: most people, even adults, do not read instructions, children who cannot read will ignore written text anyhow, but most importantly for us, there is no need and in fact, instructions get in the way of the experience : the navigation through the various sections of the site is purposefully simple and intuitive, the functionalities within games are carefully thought out to afford a maximum of possibilities while keeping that special relationship to the real World.

When small children pick up objects, they invent new ways of holding and using them. Thus there is no right or wrong way of using anything on this site. It’s up to the children to find what they want and to grow their naturally exploring mind. We found that what they don’t discover straight away, they’ll find later, what they don’t know how to do at first, they’ll learn when they are ready and, as many of you know and/or have found out, that is extremely powerful and confidence building.

Take a look!

Thanks to Dan Warner at the Haringey PDC for this compilation of free Art software. Some of it looks really interesting – and it is all relevant to SEN and primary learners.

In particular – Pivot is a lovely introduction to animation where children can animate a small stick figure. It will fit very nicely into this terms KS3 media project! The following was created by a 12 year old learner on the spectrum within a single lesson. What fun!

I saw this link to useful advice on using access technologies with SLD students (as seen on Wiltshire SEN ICT Nuggets).

I hope you all had an enjoyable summer. Welcome back!

I ran the text from our newsletter through wordle. It’s fantastic – and quite beautiful! I must show this to our literacy coordinator! I can see lots of applications in the classroom…

*EDIT* I just ran our recent OFSTED Report through Wordle – it’s so interesting!

1) 10ways. Looks great on an IWB. A mash-up doing brilliant things with the Getty Image library. My personal favourite is information. I have used it the younger and less able ASD children – who love it. It looks fantastic on an IWB – and works well as a mouse skills exercise, as a calming warm-up activity and to promote class discussion.

2) SENswitcher from the NGfL. A suite of programs designed to help teach early ICT skills to people with profound and multiple learning difficulties, those who need to develop skills with assistive input devices and very young children new to computers. Works well with the SLD kids.  Works well on an IWB, touchscreen or with a mouse. Not age-specific. (Thanks to X-Posed blog by teachingassistantuk for that one).

3) Whiteboard Room has an absolutely fantastic range of MLD, SLD and PMLD resources (thanks to Sean O’Sullivan for recommending this at the SENJIT conference).

4) Priory Wood School has some excellant resources avaliable on it’s website. (Thanks to the Redbridge Primary ICT blog for that one).

5) SEN Teacher. Lots of great resources applicable across the curriculum.

Also of course are the old favourites for the younger ones - CBeebies and Thomas the Tank Engine sites. When used in partnership with basicmouse or a touchscreen or interactive whiteboard they can be approriate for almost any ability level. Try the Thomas Emotions game with ASD!

Any technical issues with using these resources will likely be solved by downloading Adobe Shockwave and Flash.