Ways in Which ICT Can Support Person-Centred Annual Reviews

Aside

ICT and Annual Reviews

Many schools are now using Person Centred Annual reviews with their pupils. ICT can help to give the pupil or young person with SEND a voice. Children will want to and have the opportunity to demonstrate how things have been going for them in school over the year. Short films, voice recordings and photographs help to record events that have past, demonstrate progression over a period and showcase school life to others, like parents and EPs,  who will be at the meeting.

This is a few thoughts about how films, photos etc can be presented for the person-centred annual review.

Making books (to print out): You could use Clicker 7, Powerpoint, Word  to make books that you can print out. Make a minibook with 2Simple’s 2CreateAStory.

Making online books:Use Book Creator on iPad, Story Creator and various comic strip tools

Presentations and videos:UsePowerpoint or Prezi,  Our Story (from Open University), iMovie or Movie Maker. Try Adobe Spark Video.

Using Apps: Book Creator is my favourite, but you can also use Our Story, Comic Book!, My Story. Shadow Puppet.

Working with Reluctant Writers

Wordle: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

 

Some Ideas for working with Reluctant Writers

DawnTreader

We watched the first 10 minutes of “The Voyage of the Dawn Treader” and chatted about it, about the war, evacuation, Edmund wanting to be a soldier, etc. Some children then used Clicker grids (prepared beforehand) to make a Clicker book telling the story. Others used 2Simple’s 2CreateAStory, importing pictures I’d saved on the shared area and using this Wordle (see above) to help with spellings if required.

Book about Narnia

 

 

 

Then we used PurpleMash MashCams.  The children choose a character to be, take a photo of themselves (using the webcam)  and imagine what it is like to be that character. (If you do not have a webcam you can import a previously taken photo) They write about their life/work/day/adventures and can also record their voice.

MashCams      MashCam

More ideas……

Telescopic text

try this one out:  http://telescopictext.com/

and then make up your own:

http://www.telescopictext.org/write/

Fun with photos

Taking photos is easy. But they can be a bit boring, a bit formal. We wanted to do something a bit different.

john galloway head and shouldersWe started by looking at some photos of me, like this one, and discussed what made a good portrait. Simple things like keeping the background clear, and trying not to catch someone looking silly.

 

Then we paired up and  took our own with Canon Ixus digital cameras.

We got some lovely portrait photos, but wanted to jazz them up a bit, add some effects and make them more fun. We used Photosimple . This has lots of tools to adjust an image, such as cropping, re-sizing and red-eye removal, then in-built effects, frames and filters to play around with.

See what you think.

two witchs Mr Cool

Feeling sick Everything upFungus head Everyones Cool

 

Keyboarding skills.

Some children with disability (perhaps global delay, Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, dyslexia, cerebral palsy etc) have trouble with fine motor movements and struggle to hold pencils, tiring easily. They may have writing which is not really legible.

If they are going to be able to publish work by typing much more easily that by writing, get them to practice keyboarding regularly.

2TypeA touch typing programme should be available.  If your school subscribes to PurpleMash (online) you will have 2Type (in the Games section) which has seven programs for learners of all ages to develop touch typing, keyboarding skills and spelling patterns. It can also be bought inexpensively as software to load onto a computer or a network. http://www.2simple.com/2Type/

doorwayonline

Doorwayonline is very good (free)  website for learning touch typing and for doing keyboarding. http://www.doorwayonline.org.uk/    Also free is the BBC Dance Mat Typing website which lots of children love.

dancemat

 

 

 

 

On an iPad possible Typing apps are Typing Fingers, (average reviews)  TapTyping, (good reviews) taptyping but I can’t find any keyboarding apps particularly good for young children;Clever keyboard

 Clever Keyboard: Free ABC Learning game for Kids is quite good but is mostly upper case.

Children could practice on a laptop or PC as the skills are transferable. And a bluetooth/wifi keyboard on the iPad may suit users better than the on screen keyboard. Apple make Bluetooth keyboards to use with iPads: http://store.apple.com/uk/product/MC184B/B/apple-wireless-keyboard-british

Make sure the keyboard and screen are positioned  well to avoid glare and that the child is comfortable.

Superkeys Assistive Keyboard is a brilliant app for using on an iPad. It is great for anyone with visual impairment or with fine motor problems because it gives the keyboard user a much larger key to aim at.  It can be used in any app on the ipad that uses a keyboard so can be selected in Pages, Word, Notes, Email etc It includes a word predictor and can be personalised,  keys can contain words and phrases as well as letters.

Superkeys keyboard for iPad from Cricksoft

If you have a child whose speech is fairly clear and they have a quieter place to go than a busy classroom

Dragon Naturally Speaking

Dragon Naturally Speaking

they might sometimes use Voice to Text software. This might be ideal for homework.

 

Dragon App

Dragon App

Workshop on publishing stories with ICT

 One of the great things about technology is not only that it can support the writing process, but it can also motivate children and young people to write who might otherwise be reluctant. Given the opportunity to create a book that they can not only print out in colour, but also add sounds and animations to on-screen, a lot of learners will engage when getting them to complete the same task with pen and paper would prove tortuous.

For this workshop we had primary and secondary pupils, all of whom could find writing an onerous event, either because of their literacy levels or their behaviour, but all of them created a story of at least four pages, with illustrations. (You can see some of them on our pupils’ work pages, here https://ictandinclusion.edublogs.org/pupils-work/ )

We started by using the Scholastics Story Starters website to generate some initial, original, even rather wacky, ideas. http://www.scholastic.com/teachers/story-starters/

Then we moved on to 2Simple’s 2Createastory to develop these ideas. This provides a simple publishing template, a page with room for an illustration and some text. On printing, four  pages will fold into a book. More than four and the software spreads the pages out so they can be folded and interleaved.

What many of the learners enjoyed was adding sound, particularly their own voices. More than one, who might otherwise be termed a ‘reluctant reader,’ recorded themselves reading their own words on each page.  There was a palable sense of excitement, pride and achievement at the end of the session when they not only had a printed book in their hands, but could also see their work on-screen.

As they finished they were directed onto a second activity using the Mashcams on Purplemash (2Simple’s online service). This, too, is very simple but effective. It provides a number of masks for the pupils to select – astronaut, police officer, Queen Elizabeth, newsreaders and many more –  into which the user inserts their own face using the webcam built in to the machine. Then they can add text and, or, record themselves. It is  a great way for getting imaginations fired up, or for practising empathy. A simple idea, but one that can be implemented quickly, easily, and engagingly because of technology.