Technology Integration in a Life Skills Program

We spent an intensive morning this past Tuesday working on our All About Me! projects.  Mandy, Tom, Olivia, Selina, Morgan and TJ all worked very hard, as you can see from the video above!  These students learned how to record their voices in Audacity, and then how to insert those sound files into their PowerPoint All About Me! presentations.

Students in the Smartboard class on Wednesday afternoons enjoy watching and getting their friend’s feedback on their All About Me! projects.  Everyone continues to be working very hard on completing their projects.

The projects in the above videos were all done in the software program Switch It! Maker.  Video was shot using the Flip video cameras.  Each project was then projected on the Smartboard.

As you can see by clicking on the video above, our Smartboard class every Wednesday afternoon (lead by Student Services Software Technician, Heather Campbell) is alot of fun!

Students choose from a variety of Smartboard Activities by selecting a  symbol card from the chalkboard, and then presenting that symbol to communicate the activity they want to play.

The activity is then cued up on the Smartboard, and the student who chose that activity then gets to play the game (or navigate the activity) by themselves, or invite a friend in the class to play too!

Supporting these students in this class are their wonderful EAs, who are also getting a chance to practice their Smartboard skills (setting up the board, locking it in place, connecting all cables, and getting the LCD projector and laptop to all work together, and of course orienting the board!)

As you can see in the video below, even some of the students in this class are now able to orient the board to help prepare for this class!

Karen West (SD 71 Student Services tech coordinator), Jane Rondow (SET-BC consultant) and Keith Keller (SD71 Lifeskills teacher) met on April 24 to get collectively up to date on the project and plan final steps. We discussed both the successes and challenges that the team has met to this point. Among the successes has been the enthusiasm students have shown for creating their project content, creating photo and video content and building their talking book projects. Staff have increased their comfort level with integrating technology in our very busy classroom. We have encountered a number of tech challenges — many of them relating to managing the considerable flow of photos and video that resulted, as well as effectively using video editing software and uploading video to the SET-BC site. It’s been a huge learning experience. Karen and Jane will be working with Lifeskills staff and students to help complete as many projects as possible beyond the three students this project was specifically created for.

Created by Alex

Click on the video above to watch Alex’s great production of A Day in the Life of Lifeskills. A fabulous video of the Isfeld Life Skills students created by graduating SETBC student, Alex.  Thank you for this wonderful video Alex, and best of luck on continuing your technology career at university/college.

Click on the videos above to watch Trevor creating his Clicker 5 All About Me! project.

Below is the video of our students brainstorming the activities that they do in the Life Skills program.  The footage was captured, edited, and movie made using the Flip software.

We will then make sure we have photos and videos of the students doing some of these activities, that they will eventually add to their All About Me! presentations in PowerPoint, Clicker 5, and Switch It! Maker software programs.

Thank you to Lorraine for final editing and movie production, and to all the staff and students in the Life Skills program for shooting video and working so hard on this project.

The March 5, 6, and 7th teacher strike days provided an unprecedented training opportunity for EAs in our district.  To capitalize on this, our Student Services Software technician, Heather Campbell, offered her technology expertise to continue technology training for the Isfeld Life Skills EAs.

Since the program had just purchased a Smartboard on a cart, it was decided that training in the interactive whiteboard and it’s software (Notebook) would occur.

Day 1: Hardware Basics/ Hands on the Board

EAs worked with Heather to learn the hardware basics of the Smartboard.  They discovered how to setup the board, lcd projector and computer, which also included board basic skills like: calibrating, raising/lowing board on the portable stand, setting the brakes, and using the USB cable to attach to the computer.

The EAs then had a chance to have “hands on” the board, by using the board to interact with the Internet and software programs like Microsoft Word, Paint, Clicker 5, etc.

Day 2: Notebook Software and Pre-Made Activities

On this day EAs spent time learning Notebook software basics. They practiced using the various tools on the toolbars, including highlighting pens, spotlight, and screen shade.  They were also introduced to the Gallery (images and interactive images, templates, etc), and online pre-made resources.  Everyone went online to the Smart Exchange website and explored different subject activities (calendar, math, etc) to see their suitability for the Life Skills students.  An account was created for Life Skills in Smart Exchange (so they could download activities) and the group compiled a list of  their favourite activities.

Day 3: Pre-Made Activities Customized for Life Skills

Heather arrived on day 3 with all of the favourite activities from the day before downloaded and put into subject folders.  These were then loaded onto the Smartboard computer.  Everyone then split into 2 groups and they had “hands on” exploration time working through the favourite activities and narrowing them down to four activities that they would begin using the next day with students.  These included calendar, attendance, weather, and hangman activities.   Lastly these programs were personalized to include student and staff names, etc.  These activities were to be used the next day when students returned.

How are things going now?

“It is going good with the smart board.  We are using it in the morning for attendence, calender, weather, math games and whatever else we get the chance to do.  Thanks for your help Heather!”

The 22 students, 1.6 teachers  and 11 staff in our Lifeskills program have been busy, busy since receiving our shipment of SET-BC computers, video cameras and associated equipment. We started off with a great Pro D day training session with district techie Karen West and SET-BC consultant Jane Rondow.

In our project, our students will be creating All About Me talking books, focusing on their favourite school activities. We launched our project with a great brainstorming session with students and staff, where we discussed all the activities we do in our program.  During that session it became clear just how busy we are with life skills learning and a host of community activities!

From the extensive master list of program activities created, students each chose six activites that they would like to have represented in their talking books. Here’s a sample of their choices: social skills classes, selling pizzas in the school canteen, bowling, walking the St John’s Ambulance therapy dogs, math games, money math, theraputic riding, yoga, swimming, reading, PE, shopping and cooking, listening to special musical guests.

Since the brainstorming session, we’ve been busy training student videographers and learning just how much work is involved in downloading, evaluating and categorizing the volume of video footage they have brought in. Plus there have been the inevitable technical glitches! We’re actually taking a step back to refine our organizational protocols before moving on to the next phase of image gathering.

The next step with students is to begin pulling together their All About Me! books, by inserting videos, images, text and audio into the book software program that works best for them (Kurzweil & PowerPoint, Clicker 5, and SwitchIt! Maker).

Wow!

Keith Keller, Lifeskills Teacher, Mark R. Isfeld High School

This video was shot with our new FLIP video cameras.  We then took still photos of some of the best video using the FLIP editing software.  Lastly, we used Photostory 3 (a free movie making program), to create this video.  Enjoy!

During our morning training session with Lifeskills EAs and Teachers we explored four software programs;

1)  Switch It Maker!

2) Clicker 5

3) Kurzweil 3000

4) PowerPoint

For our project, students will be in 3 groups, and will use photographs, videos and text to create All About Me e-books.

One group of students will be using Switch It Maker with their EAs to create  their book.  The second group of students will be using the Clicker 5 software program, and the last group of students will be using Kurzweil 3000 to compose their written work, and then insert that into PowerPoint to create their All About Me “book”.

At the end of our training session we also played with the FLIP video cameras, and discussed some basic tips and tricks when using them.  Lastly, we had a quick demonstration of the new Smartboard, we can’t wait to use it!