With the current focus of my grad work being around the question of “How can I best support kids with disabilities, and their teachers, in an outdoor learning context”, my focus throughout this course has been: How does digital assistive technology fit in with outdoor learning?
The two approaches seem far apart at first. Outdoor learning is often framed as some sort of antidote for the evils of too much screen time. However, both outdoor learning and digital technology are natural ways to incorporate Universal Design for Learning into teaching practice, and actually have enormous potential to work together to support rich learning experiences for all learners. My action plan is to share what I’ve learned throughout this course with other outdoor educators by creating and sharing a blog post with suggestions for digital tech that can be used to enhance outdoor learning and make it more accessible for everyone. To do this, I’m going to be downloading a variety of apps that have potential to do this, test them with my colleagues and students in a daycamp setting over the summer, with the goal of having a resource ready to share with other educators by September. This is a work in progress at this point, but here’s some of what I’m considering. 1) What is the best physical technology to use for this? Outdoor learning means any equipment used is liable to be exposed to cold, wet conditions, potentially get dropped, and may not have access to wifi. With this in mind, the best option for physical tech would be the smart phones that educators (and potentially students) already have in their own pockets. This will work well for apps that are to be used primarily by educators, or for apps used by highschool students, but won’t work well for younger students. The next best option is a tablet. But which one? And how do we keep it safe? 2) How do we take care of the physical technology outdoors? Part of my plan will be to look at a variety of protective cases for tablets and phones to find options that will best protect the tech outdoors. Ideally a case for a phone or tablet used outdoors needs to be waterproof, rugged, brightly coloured, and have a handle or strap attachment. 3) Which apps work without wifi? Since outdoor learning often takes place away from cell service or wifi signal, any app considered for outdoor learning needs to work well without cell or wifi signal, or at least preserve MOST of its function. 4) Apps need to be FREE. Since implementing these apps may in some cases require asking students or staff to download them onto their smartphones before going outdoors, it’s ideal if the apps chosen are free to download and use. 5) Plant and Animal ID apps -Do these apps actually work here? There are a variety of plant and animal ID apps available but some are more / less accurate than others. I’ll be assessing which ones are the most helpful and accurate for Vancouver Island to make recommendations. Some Apps I’m Looking At: Here are some of the apps I’m going to be considering: Seek Merlin Bird ID Animal Explorer Free Sounds and Photos Star Walk The Night Sky Plum’s Creatureizer Outdoor Family Fun with Plum Nature Cat’s Great Outdoors Air Measure Magnifier – used for accessibility for visual impairments but also cool for looking at bugs! Color ID – used for accessibility for visually impaired or colour blind Pic Collage – used for representing and capturing learning Book Creator – used for representing and capturing learning Explain Everything – used for representing and capturing learning Stay Tuned to this space for the results of this project!
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I began this project by learning about Toolbelt Theory, as suggested by Ira Socol and required for the assignment. Toolbelt Theory, by Socol's own admission, is based on the SETT Framework developed by Joy Zabala. As I learned about SETT, it became clear that SETT is currently fairly widely used and accepted as a best practice for choosing Assistive Technology. This project is therefore based on the original SETT Framework as best practices, rather than Toolbelt Theory. Liam is a fictional student based on a combination of learner profile, learning goals, and educational environments of a few different real children. Read and Write is an extension for Google Chrome, made by texthelp, that can be used to support learners of all ages.
Being called Read and Write, it’s obviously got a variety of tools to help with both of those skills. The play, pause and stop controls are used for text to speech. The text is double highlighted which allows you to follow along as it is read out loud. This is helpful for students who are building their literacy skills, and also for students who can’t concentrate on reading for long periods. For writing, there’s a speech to text option. This works within a Google Doc. You speak, and the app translates your speech into text. I’ve found this feature helpful for getting started on written assignments, and know a middle school student with ADHD who uses this feature this way as well. One drawback here is that it does just come out as one long stream of consciousness. You can go back in and fix it up, and there are tools within Read and Write for checking what you’ve written, but turning what this tool produces into readable text does take additional work and that is something to be aware of. There are some challenges for students in using these features within a classroom setting. When supporting students with disability, it’s important to provide tools that preserve the student’s dignity and don’t lead to further frustration. The nature of the text to speech and speech to text tools mean it is very obvious to those around them when a student is using them, which may be embarrassing for a student in a classroom setting. As well, use of these tools requires a relatively quiet environment, and using them in a loud classroom setting may lead to frustration. With this in mind, I think it’s important to provide students using Read & Write with some additional accommodations, such as headphones or earbuds when using text to speech, and a quiet environment when using speech to text. Ideally, of course, all of these tools are available to everyone. So if this is implemented in a classroom setting, providing a quiet corner and a set of headphones for students to use when using these tools will be important. The reading and writing features the app is named after are powerful, but aren’t the only features of Read and Write. Read and Write is referred to as a ‘swiss army knife’ of assistive technology, and one of the things I really like about it is that you can choose which tools are in your knife. The ability to customize the toolbar is going to be really helpful if you’re using this to support students with ADHD or other executive functioning issues, as this helps minimize distractions. You can use the Settings area to choose which features are available to a student, and remove those that aren’t helpful for them. For instance, I have some executive function issues myself, and I find the Simplify Page feature very helpful as it gets rid of all the distracting and temptingly clickable parts of a webpage and allows me to focus on just the material I am trying to read. On the other hand, the screen masking tool, which is intended to help with focus, doesn’t work for me at all. I actually find this tool really frustrating and anxiety inducing. So being able to remove it from my toolbar is great. You can also do fun things in here to help with student engagement, like choosing the voice the app uses. I like the Samantha US voice as I find it the easiest to understand, but for students who have good literacy skills and are using Read and Write because they struggle with engagement when they are reading, it might be fun to play with having the app use the voice of their favorite South Asian auntie or their Scottish grandpa. There are several features that can support students with study skills. If you’re reading along and come across a word you don’t know the meaning of, the dictionary tool can help you out. There’s also a visual dictionary that could be helpful for English language learners. And once you’ve learned the new word, you can use the highlight tool and the Vocabulary List tool to create a Google Doc full of your new vocabulary words. The highlight tool can also be used to take notes, you can highlight text and group it according to topic, and then it will create a Google Doc for you with your notes and also include the reference to the webpage where the information come from. These features do have one important consideration, which is that many of them require a student to have a Google account that they are logged into, be comfortable navigating the internet, and have some knowledge of how to use Google Docs. As I previously mentioned, it’s important that tools don’t cause additional frustration for students who are already struggling. Providing Read & Write to a student who doesn’t know how to navigate the internet, doesn’t have a Google account, or isn’t adept at using the Google tools the platform relies on, such as Google Docs, may prevent the tool from being helpful for the student, and may in fact cause additional frustration. Overall, Read & Write has the potential to be a powerful set of tools, but implementing it in your classroom, or at home, has to be done thoughtfully to ensure that it’s actually useful. Students will need practice using it, and will also need to be skilled in using the Google tools that Read & Write works with. I definitely recommend getting familiar with it.. and also recommend paring down that toolbar if you have ADHD. I’m a teacher who doesn’t like school.
That might sound like a shocking statement. But I’ve never liked school. As a child, I struggled hard. I was reading and writing several grade levels above my age. I was also massively nearsighted and nobody knew, which was a huge issue in a classroom where the teacher mostly provided instructions by writing on the board. And, I struggle with executive function. So even though I was a smart kid, for my first few years of school I was bored out of my mind, constantly distracted, and unable to see properly, with teachers who focused mostly on my behavior and very little on figuring out why I was constantly roaming the classroom. School seemed like a place where success meant fitting in with the average, and I was constantly being reminded that I.. wasn’t. So what changed? Two things - One – I got some assistive technology to help with my visual impairment - I wear glasses now – and two – I changed schools and ended up with a 4th grade teacher – Mr. Bunbury - who thought it was GREAT that I wasn’t ‘average’. And you know what? NOBODY is average! Every learner has strengths, and every learner has struggles. But, our classrooms, and curriculum, are designed for a mythical “average” student. And, according to Todd Rose, the director of the Mind, Brain, and Education program at Harvard University, and a research scientist with CAST – the Centre for Applied Special Technology, that often means that our classrooms don’t work for ANYONE. I loved Mr. Bunbury’s class because he really cared about making things engaging, and that’s what I needed. He actually thought about how kids learn, and used that to design his classroom. He didn’t know it, but he was following the principles of something that we now call Universal Design for Learning. To understand Universal Design for Learning, or UDL, imagine a building with stairs leading to an entrance. Those stairs work for MOST people who might want to enter the building, but they don’t work for wheelchair users. So you can add a ramp to the building that leads to a separate, special, accessible entrance with wider doors and contactless controls. Solved the problem, right? Well – not really. Because even though wheelchair users can access the building, by having a separate entrance you’re singling them out. And, you have to build TWO separate entrances! What if instead, the accessible entrance WAS the entrance… for everybody? Everyone can use a ramp. Everyone can walk through a wide door. And the accessible controls – people with disabilities can use them, but they’re also super useful for anybody whose hands are full or just feels nervous wondering when the last time that door handle was cleaned. Universal Design for Learning or UDL, as defined by CAST, is a framework to improve and optimize teaching and learning for all people based on scientific insights into how humans learn. There’s a lot more to it than I can go into here – I’m just starting to learn about it myself - but the gist of UDL is that it is important to remove barriers to learning and provide learners – all learners, not just the disabled ones – with options. Rather than retrofit your lessons to adapt to particular student needs, you start from the beginning by planning learning experiences that allow multiple ways to engage with the learning, multiple ways to represent and access information, and multiple ways to express what has been learned. Providing learners with lots of options is important, and not just to address disabilities. For instance, speaking instructions aloud rather than just writing them on a board means visually impaired students can access the information, but it also helps kids who are bored stay engaged, ensures that kids who struggle with reading can hear what the instructions are, and may also be more welcoming for students who come from cultures based on an oral tradition. Assistive digital technologies like text to speech tools and digital text can support students who struggle with reading in accessing information, but can also help ALL students develop their literacy skills, and can help students like me stay engaged. CAST, and other folks who think deeply about UDL, seem to talk a lot about context. And as a teacher who doesn’t like traditional school, this really resonates with me, because when I teach, it's a really different context. I teach outdoors. Just by doing this, we remove a lot of barriers to learning. Like, actual physical barriers – there are no walls! Kids aren’t expected to sit still, they’re allowed to move their bodies, and for children with sensory issues, being outdoors in nature where the light is gentler, the sounds of loud bells and clanging lockers are replaced by birdsong, and let’s be honest – it smells better.. it’s a much friendlier environment to engage with. Kids with ADHD who are easily distracted in the classroom become heroes because… SQUIRREL! Is actually a strength when you’re outside. Being outdoors also changes how information can be presented. If you want to learn about a cedar tree in a classroom – well.. you can read a book.. or I can show you a movie.. but outdoors you can use all of your senses to experience an actual tree!. You can see it, you can touch it, you can smell it, you can listen to the way the wind moves through its branches or hear an elder share knowledge about it... And you can still read books outdoors! In terms of representing learning – the traditional way to show you’ve learned something in a classroom is to write something about it. Outdoors, reading and writing is actually kind of hard.. for everybody. We don’t’ have desks, and sometimes it’s raining. Which is great, because it evens the playing field for kids who aren’t good at, or don’t enjoy, reading and writing. When I teach outdoors, I offer kids the opportunity to talk about their experiences in a talking circle, use photos and videos to share everyone’s learning with their parents, ask kids to create and perform skits to express their learning, and even offer a follow up journal where they can write, or draw about their experiences in a more traditional format. Taking your learning outside is a really effective way to embrace the principles of UDL. But it’s not perfect. There are still barriers. Some kids have physical disabilities that make navigating uneven surfaces and rough trails difficult. Outdoors is a different acoustic environment and that makes it difficult for hearing impaired students to hear instructions. Some kids might be anxious about being outside, especially if they don’t spend a lot of time outdoors, or… if being outdoors means the digital assistive technology they rely on doesn’t work. Outdoors, we can still use assistive tech. In fact, we are using assistive tech every time we pick up a pair of binoculars! There are specialized wheelchairs that allow wheelchair users to travel over rough forested trails. There are portable microphones that instructors can use to help ALL students hear them better. There are even apps for mobile phones that can help all students identify plants and animals. But we can’t plug anything in and sometimes don’t even have cell service. It sometimes rains, and it’s a lot more likely that an electronic device that gets dropped will be broken. Which means for students who rely on digital tools as assistive technology, going outdoors to learn might actually create anxiety. Maybe that doesn’t matter, because by moving outdoors we’ve totally changed the context. You don’t need a screen reader if nobody’s asking you to read or write, but you might need a durable waterproof case and an extra battery pack for your AAC device. I don’t know what the place for digital tech in outdoor learning actually is, but I do know that learning outdoors is a great way to embrace the principles of Universal Design for Learning, and that assistive tech can help make the experience of outdoor learning available for more students. It’s just that outside, the assistive tech is maybe…. a little lower tech. |