How Has Technology Changed My Teaching (A18)

I went to college for Elementary Ed following my divorce.  My oldest two children were in kindergarten and second grade at the time and were using computers in school.  Having been out of school for ten years, I knew I had to learn to use a computer.  So, the first semester, I took Keyboarding and the second semester I took Intro to Computers (back in the days of Lotus and Word Perfect).  Since then, I have been a certified teacher for 19 years and have worked as an SLP-P for 6 years.

I started writing lesson plans with paper & pencil.  As soon as the teachers were given computers, I created a lesson plan form and started doing them on the computer and printing them out.  One copy was handed into the office and one copy was taped in the traditional lesson plan book to be handed in at the end of the year.

During the summers, I taught full day summer school for first graders.  I was allowed to have the student computers from other rooms (each classroom had one old Apple that needed the boot up floppy).  We had computers set up with a printer.  While I worked with half the class on reading, the other half were typing an assignment (name, address, phone number) and then were allowed to play a game of their choosing.  The shift, enter, delete, and space bar keys were color coded.  The color coding was explained and visuals were created to help the children.  Also, since my children were out of school for the summer and older, I incorporated their assistance in helping the students with the computers.

As time went by, our school got internet and a computer lab; however, the students only had access to the internet in the computer lab.  Having a computer lab, the school started offering an after-school technology program which I co-taught.  Back then, the internet was quite new, child safe search engines didn't exist, and filtering was rather poor.  The children were able to print their science fair information, captions, graphs, and pictures versus handwriting or drawing them.  Also, with internet came the ability to email our lesson plans.  However, we still had to print a copy for the office and put a copy in our binder to be turned in at the end of the year.

About the same time as the internet came, teachers each received a computer for their classroom.  I used Publisher to create a slide show for the first grade reading words that the students would encounter in their new story.  Every day prior to reading the story, we'd review the words learned in the previous story plus cover the current words.  (I had to keep track of whose turn it was to run the slide show as it would cause an argument.).

Now as an SLP-P, the majority of my job is working with students to correctly produce phonemes with the correct use/position of their articulators (tongue, lips, teeth, etc).  My greatest tool in this is a mirror (pretty low tech).   However, I have learned to use different software and Tienet (a state site for IEP's).   Boardmaker is a program that I use a lot to create visual schedules for students and articulation activities.  If needed, I could create a communication book using the program; however, I have not worked with students with those needs as of yet.

With the internet, comes a wealth of resources.  We no longer have to copy, draw, or color most of the resources that we want.  I have used Pinterst and Teachers Pay Teachers on numerous occasions to find various activities to incorporate in therapy.  Also, Quia is an online site that I use quite often in therapy whether it's language or artic.  At first, I used Quia on a touch screen computer with the younger children.

With overcrowding at schools in western ND, others may need our rooms at times.  Having an Ipad, is great for the convenience of having to move to another area without much notice.  With various apps, I can use it for articulation and language.  However, I have found limitations with many of the apps such as the ability to individualize the to specific needs or the ability to randomize or shuffle the order in which items are presented.

I have and will continue to share some of the tool learned in ED521 with case managers and others at our sped unit, but that will be for another blog.