Voicethread and Parents

As some of you have noticed I recently I have put up two Voicethread posts about classroom activities. I am not sure why it surprised me, but tonight I spoke with a parent of one of my students and she loves the Voicethreads! A few commenters and other bloggers have noted that the Voicethreads are a nice way to show what goes on in intensive special needs classrooms and it registered with me, but more as a way to showcase to other teachers some things we are doing, not as a way to show parents what their sons and daughters have been up to in school.

The parent shared that her sister actually viewed the Voicethread about snow before she did and could name the slides that involved her nephew, if only by his hands. How cool! My student was able to be a star. Brothers and sisters of my students get to be online and in local papers all the time, for scouts, dancing, honor roll or sports awards. My students don't make it online or in the papers nearly as often (if ever). While I will never put my student's faces or names online as it is an invasion of privacy and dignity, even if I do have parental permission, just the "hands only" multimedia presentations are enough to give a taste of our daily experiences and make my students stars to their families.

I would expect to see more of these on this site in the coming months!

The Plasma Screen and White Board Room

Here is a link to a fantastic page of activities and resources for what is called in the UK P-scales special needs students (P-scales is what in Massachusetts is awareness level of the curriculum, elsewhere it is called emerging level or cause and effect level). I have not yet explored all of the activities, but the ones I have are excellent. The site is called the Plasma Screen and White Board Room. If you don't have a Plasma Screen or White Board, a touch screen will do. The link only seems to be working if you get to it by going through the ttrb SEN site and then clicking on the link to the Plasma Screen and White Board Room at the bottom of the page.

The activities are designed to work on Power Point, Opus or SMART Notebook (viewers are available if you do not have the applications). The areas of the curriculum offered match the UK national curriculum (kind of like logging into the UK part of Learning Grids for Clicker 5). Some notes: RE is Religious Education, PMLD is Profound and Multiple Learning Disabilities (look here for cause and effect, scanning, social/sensory stories), Design and Technology often includes cookery, PSHE is personal, social and health education.

Take some time and explore some time and download some activities. Then upload some in return!