Kate's Class Video of the Day Blog

Starting last week I have been posting a video of the day (VOD) that my class watches at the end of morning meeting in a new blog, Kate's Class Video of the Day. The blog does embed YouTube videos, among others, so it may not work in your setting.

It will feature seasonal/holiday videos as appropriate, rounded out with "Music Every One Should Know" and music that can be tied to either my class's curriculum or to current events or news in our room. Feel free to suggest video ideas.

Adam Lambert is My Personal American Idol

Apparently I live under a rock, because I didn't know who Adam Lambert was, which is because I do not have a television. Yes, you read that correctly. I do follow a few TV programs via Hulu, but I don't have a TV. This means many conversations go like this, "Hey, Kate did you see... oh yeah... forget it." (And now you know how I have time to write this blog!)

Imagine my surprise to discover that I was getting quite a few donations from Adam Lambert Supports Education to my Donors Choose projects. Actually one fan club in particular, ONTD_AL, had chosen one project, "Avoid the Void" to ask Adam's fans to donate to. (ONTD stands for Oh, No They Didn't - ask someone who follows American Idol to explain... I now understand, but I cannot do the story justice the way some one who followed the show live can.)

Thus far ONTD_AL has lead to 9 donations to our classroom project, which is enough for me to make Adam Lambert and his fans my idols. We celebrated Adam by making him our video of the day (VOD) star on the say we discovered we were on the ONTD_AL short list. How cool is that?

News-2-You Introduces SymbolStix Online

The folks who bring us News-2-You and Unique Learning Systems are now offering their symbols subscription style online for $99 (the price will rise to $129 eventually). SymbolStix are the Symbols used in the News-2-You papers, Unique Learning System, the Proloquo2Go iPhone/iPod Touch AAC App, the Tobii AAC products (the C Series), AMDi Overlay Designer Pro, Jabbla AAC devices, PCI Printed Books and also is among the symbols offered on Pogo Boards. More and more our students are becoming familiar with SymbolStix.

SymbolStix Online will allow subscribers to use a simple search to find and then download symbols in any of their choice of a variety of formats for import into other communication or board designing programs (Boardmaker, PhotoSYMS) or a regular office program.

The SymbolStix collection has 12,000 symbols and grows as News-2-You papers and Unique Learning System Units are produced. Currently SymbolStix are in six languages. If there isn't a symbol you need it can be requested online.

As a user of Unique Learning System, News-2-You and Proloquo2Go I am excited to get to stop taking screenshots of SymbolStix on PDFs and then cut them and paste them into Boardmaker to enlarge them for my students with low vision. This should substantially lower my work load.

I do wish there was a week long free trial to allow us to try before we buy, especially since we can get SymbolStix at PogoBoards if we wish.

Spin Art Part Two

About a week ago I posted about the Lite Brite FX Spin Art machine I picked up at a thrift store for around $5.00.

I thought folks might like some pictures of it in action making some Halloween themed spin art. From left: a student using a head switch (not seen) watches as her choice of green paint is applied, student uses the regular spin art machine button to make the art spin (in a technique I like to call "armpit switch" since it is easier to "armpit switch" than it is to take out the battery interrupter), a staff explains to a student through how to apply the paint before trading jobs and having the staff hit the switch while the student drips the paint. A great time was had by all.

(I wish I had more pictures, but sadly our esteemed photographer was doing double duty in another part of the classroom. Those of you in the field will know what I mean by "stander magic".)

Two Sites to Make Your Own Games

Game Salad and Purpose Games are both sites that allow people to create their own interactive online games. Bring it on!

Please post links to what you make in the comments!

AAC Gloves

Proloquo2Go gloves? Because you still have to communicate in the cold. Etre Touchy.

The things we say...

The things we say, especially those catch phrases we find ourselves saying again and again can be good indicators of the kind of classrooms we run. Are they positive places? Are they encouraging and rewarding? Do we take our students feelings seriously?

Here are some of the phrases we say are find ourselves repeating in our classroom:

• "I don't want to loose my clips!" This comment is a humorous remark that means, "I need to use the ladies' room!" It is a reference to one student's reward program that allows her to wear pretty hair clips for asking for and using the restroom as needed. I think this remark reflects our attitude towards independence and personal responsibility, positive reinforcement and having a sense of humor.
  
• "I feel like you're not listening to me!" This is a remark a student has on his communication device as part of his upset/because/you can help me by board sets. He says it periodically - and so do the rest of us - but only when we are not feeling heard. We don't say this one in jest, only we are mean it. This reflects our seriousness about making sure everyone feels heard and role models how to handle feeling angry and ignored.
• "I'll give the berift of the doubter" This is a joking paraphrase of something a young relative of a staff member said when trying to say, "I'll give the benefit of the doubt". We often remind each other to extend the "Berift of the doubter". This shows our flexibility, acceptance of others and good humor.
  

What are some of the things you say in your room?

P.S. I love it when years later classroom catch phrase stick with me. I still can't heard a certain brand of timer beep without wanting to offer a former student, from many years ago his, "minutes" of earned free time for being safe and engaged . The word "sight" will always make me chuckle because of a young lady who thought it started with "sh" and ended with "it" no matter how many times it was on her spelling list. "Oh sight!", was what everyone in the classroom said that year when something went wrong. Before I was a teacher I spent some time as a 1:1 teacher aide and my student and I would sing "Up Up and Away On my Beautiful Balloon" when I turned the handle on the Hoyer Lift. Guess what song I still sing to this day?