HI Crawford, Nice to meet you! You have provided some insightful terms and it leads me to think of students with learning challenges.....what might you do to use technology in supporting learning for those who come with learning challenges? I am sure you have a wealth of experience and have come across this through your journey. Thoughts? Doc
Dr. Courduff- As far as students with learning challenges, I have not had a lot of experience because of the stringent entrance standards for servicementbers coming into the Navy. All recruits have to have a high school diploma and many have even college degrees! My son is an example- he has an AS in Computer Science but could not find a job doing that line of work. Everyone needs a BS at least. We do try to accomodate the different learning modalities as mush as possible by offering narration and moving graphics. We are fully aware that we are teaching a bunch of video gamers so we have to keep trying new things to keep their interest. BTW- I like your application of the blogs in class beacause it ties in the new technology that we need to be familiar with for the Ed Tech degree that most of us are going after.
Two sons at Virginia Tech? They will get a good education there. I know a young lady who is friends with my daughter who goes there. She has shared her experience there with us when she is here visiting her grandparents. More power to those two young men!
A third son in the Navy! Please, thank him for his service for me. He is part of the point of the spear for projecting the pride, policies, and protecting the interests of the United States.
I noticed Dr. C has asked about how to use technology with those with learning disabilities. She will do that often. I think it is her pet project to make sure we keep those students in mind so that they will not be lost in the system. Plus, I have a personal interest in that subject. The answer may be as close as reviewing what you are doing.
Depending on the special needs of the student, your approach my need to be a little different. Using audio for those who have sight problems, text and graphics for those who can't hear very well are two examples. These can be combined in a single presentation and present the material in ways that benefit both of those students. Likewise, for those who have hearing challenges, sub-texts can be added to video presentation.
For those with learning impairments, the challenge is greater. It may need to be broken down into smaller segments with the addition of animation. Graphics may need to be simpler in nature. That would depend on the student and their individual challenges.
Lastly, for students who suffer from ADHD, keeping the material moving, in shorter segments so that they can take some time to reflect on what was presented, active graphics, and other such actions can keep them engaged. They are not lazy students who don't apply themselves. They are students with a special need from educators so that their minds don't wander off task. They are a challenge, but a challenge that can be overcome to the benefit of both the instructor and the student.
As a person who has ADD, I speak from experience. It is difficult for me to "get started" sometimes. I will do every other distracting thing until I run out of excuses and then I get to work! I had it pretty bad when I was a kid. Lucky for us, Uncle Sam stepped in in 1990 and developed the American's with Disabilities Act (Simonson, Smaldino, Albright, and Zvacek, (2012). This is something that forgot to mention in my reply post to Dr. C. The Section 508 compliance statute of this act states that we should have accompanying narration text to our audio files. If you look into the Navy's Integrated Learning Environment (ILE) standards, the Intelligence Community (IC) is exempt from this regulation. We include it anyway because it was requested by the command. Our content never leaves the secure environment so I decided that we would be okay. I believe the reason the IC is exempt is for security reasons but I have never gotten a straight answer on that one. When we first started implementing it, it was very difficult to integrate because we had to listed to short snippets of the content and transcribe it by hand. That took a long time for my graphics people. Now we just do it when we are making the content from scratch and I just include the narration script and it is a lot easier. Reference: Simonson, M., Smaldino, S., Albright, M., & Zvacek, S. (2012). Teaching and learning at a distance: Foundations of distance education. Boston, MA: Pearson.
HI Crawford, Nice to meet you! You have provided some insightful terms and it leads me to think of students with learning challenges.....what might you do to use technology in supporting learning for those who come with learning challenges? I am sure you have a wealth of experience and have come across this through your journey. Thoughts?
ReplyDeleteDoc
Dr. Courduff- As far as students with learning challenges, I have not had a lot of experience because of the stringent entrance standards for servicementbers coming into the Navy. All recruits have to have a high school diploma and many have even college degrees! My son is an example- he has an AS in Computer Science but could not find a job doing that line of work. Everyone needs a BS at least. We do try to accomodate the different learning modalities as mush as possible by offering narration and moving graphics. We are fully aware that we are teaching a bunch of video gamers so we have to keep trying new things to keep their interest. BTW- I like your application of the blogs in class beacause it ties in the new technology that we need to be familiar with for the Ed Tech degree that most of us are going after.
ReplyDeleteHi Crawford,
ReplyDeleteTwo sons at Virginia Tech? They will get a good education there. I know a young lady who is friends with my daughter who goes there. She has shared her experience there with us when she is here visiting her grandparents. More power to those two young men!
A third son in the Navy! Please, thank him for his service for me. He is part of the point of the spear for projecting the pride, policies, and protecting the interests of the United States.
I noticed Dr. C has asked about how to use technology with those with learning disabilities. She will do that often. I think it is her pet project to make sure we keep those students in mind so that they will not be lost in the system. Plus, I have a personal interest in that subject. The answer may be as close as reviewing what you are doing.
Depending on the special needs of the student, your approach my need to be a little different. Using audio for those who have sight problems, text and graphics for those who can't hear very well are two examples. These can be combined in a single presentation and present the material in ways that benefit both of those students. Likewise, for those who have hearing challenges, sub-texts can be added to video presentation.
For those with learning impairments, the challenge is greater. It may need to be broken down into smaller segments with the addition of animation. Graphics may need to be simpler in nature. That would depend on the student and their individual challenges.
Lastly, for students who suffer from ADHD, keeping the material moving, in shorter segments so that they can take some time to reflect on what was presented, active graphics, and other such actions can keep them engaged. They are not lazy students who don't apply themselves. They are students with a special need from educators so that their minds don't wander off task. They are a challenge, but a challenge that can be overcome to the benefit of both the instructor and the student.
As a person who has ADD, I speak from experience. It is difficult for me to "get started" sometimes. I will do every other distracting thing until I run out of excuses and then I get to work! I had it pretty bad when I was a kid. Lucky for us, Uncle Sam stepped in in 1990 and developed the American's with Disabilities Act (Simonson, Smaldino, Albright, and Zvacek, (2012). This is something that forgot to mention in my reply post to Dr. C. The Section 508 compliance statute of this act states that we should have accompanying narration text to our audio files. If you look into the Navy's Integrated Learning Environment (ILE) standards, the Intelligence Community (IC) is exempt from this regulation. We include it anyway because it was requested by the command. Our content never leaves the secure environment so I decided that we would be okay. I believe the reason the IC is exempt is for security reasons but I have never gotten a straight answer on that one. When we first started implementing it, it was very difficult to integrate because we had to listed to short snippets of the content and transcribe it by hand. That took a long time for my graphics people. Now we just do it when we are making the content from scratch and I just include the narration script and it is a lot easier.
ReplyDeleteReference:
Simonson, M., Smaldino, S., Albright, M., & Zvacek, S. (2012). Teaching and learning at a distance: Foundations of distance education. Boston, MA: Pearson.