Student E.R. is an ELL student who never remembers his homework, assignment calendar, or Friday Folder. The first thing that came to mind when I thought about the Touch for E.R. was the ability to track homework and provide reminders. I think the Touch would be beneficial in keeping him organized. E.R. is also an ELL student whose parents speak limited English. One app, "Translator" would be beneficial for me to send notes home to his parents. E.R.'s parents have very little contact with the school and are not in the classroom, so it would be beneficial for me to video happenings in the classroom including lessons. I could then set up a blog that is accessible for all students to show to their parents so they can be more involved. A limitation I see is if E.R. forgets his Touch, which is what often happens with his schoolwork. I do not think that he has much exposure to the Touch, so I would need to ensure training not just for E.R., but for all students.
J.M. is a student with ADHD. He is required to go to the nurse's office at a certain time each day, as well as to the Speech department weekly. The Touch would be a great technology for J.M. to have to provide him with reminders. J.M. also has a very short attention span and has a hard time with things such as sustained reading or writing. The stopwatch function would work well to show him how long he had read/written and how much longer he needed to keep going. The voice recorder would help J.M. practice his speech, and his parents could review the recordings to know what he needs to work on and to help him.
S.Y. is an advanced student who would benefit from additional activities. In particular I would use apps such as Textropolis, Word Spy, or Chicktionary for spelling and literary challenge and Brain Tuner and Brain Thaw for math. In general I think S.Y. would like to explore different apps on the Touch. S.Y. also has a parent who speaks limited English, so I would also be able to use the translate app to send her mom notes in Chinese.
So feel free to try some of these things out and see how they go? We don't want the kids taking home your Touch, but use it in your placement!
ReplyDeleteI could show you how to email voice recordings from the Touch to the posterous blog platform that we're using for our podcasts later, so the child and parents could track progress....
I'm still thinking that Google Docs is the best tool for translations, but some of the apps are probably getting close to Google in accuracy.