Module 11

This weeks module was packed with new technologies and information.  The Office Publisher program was annoying at times but I was really proud with my end result.  Sometimes it was hard for me to manipulate the text boxes. I think it all came together nicely despite some of the technical failures that I had.  Signup Genius is a site that I am pretty familiar with and I already had an account with them.  My advisor uses Signup Genius to organize advisement appointments each semester.  I think it is a great tool to use, it offers various templates for people to use for free.  I like the educreation website a lot more then photostory3.  I know that the sites aren't too similar but I would rather use educreation.  Of course I haven't actually made a video using the site, but the end result seemed better to me.  Educreation is interactive where photostory3 videos are not.  I don't dislike the photostory3 tool and I was very happy with my video.

Module 10

I enjoyed the readings this week as well as the digital story activity.  In the "Digital Stories Targeting Social Skills for Children with Disabilities" article Cori More wrote, "When children experience difficulties in social areas, they may experience difficulties across many settings." This is true for people with and without disabilities.  If you can't properly function in social setting then you will be very limited in life.  Having good social skills can be beneficial to you in education as well as work.  More also wrote about peer tutoring.  I have had a lot of experience with the Montessori teaching ideology so I absolutely love peer tutoring.  It is a good way to get students actively involved in their learning.  Even struggling students can benefit from tutoring their peers.  Having a student teach a skill can help them refine it in themselves.

My uncle is autistic and throughout the years he's had a lot of classes and been given a lot of tool to teach him how to interact in social situations.  He has had many workers work one-on-one with him.  They would take him out and teach him how to cross the street, wait in line, how to tie his shoes, and lots of other things.  Whenever there was going to be a change in his schedule, that we were able to anticipate, we would slowly expose him to it.  Whenever he got a new worker or  when my grandmother would go out of town we would have to give him constant verbal reassurances.  I chose to make my digital story about going to the store.  For a while, whenever my grandmother took my uncle shopping with her he would expect to get anything he wanted.  If she said no then he would try to sneak it.  We had to work very hard for months to get him out of that habit.

I thinks that social stories can be very beneficial in the classroom.  It is very important to use vocabulary that students can understand.  Digital social stories with an audio narration of the story can help students who aren't strong visual learners.  Having students make their own social stories about specific social skills that they need to work on would help engage them in the learning process.  Having their families on board would help students carry the skills they learn out into the real world.