Teaching Learners with Multiple Special Needs

Some of the most difficult things we face in our field are those things which are intangible. One of the most damaging to our students and possible our sense of purpose as educators is that our students must somehow prove themselves, repeatedly, to show they are capable, competent and are acting with intentionality when they attempt to communicate be it through language, AAC or behavior. We live in a land of pre-requisites and accountability, which leaves little room for "The Least Dangerous Assumption" as pioneered by Anne Donnellan in 1984 and clarified by Rosetti and Tashie. The least dangerous

StoryKit is a free iPhone/iTouch/iPad app from the International Children's Digital Library. It allows the user to create story books using multimedia including images and audio clips. Integrated into the program is a paint program and ability to share books you make. You can use this app to create scrapbooks of recent classroom events, social stories and visual schedules. Essentially you are limited only by your creativity. If you download the free ARASAAC or Scelera Picture Symbol (or the...

Using a dwell program is a way to "click" the mouse and is especially useful for use with mouse emulators, like joysticks and head or eye tracking. Recently in working with a young adult who has some significant issues with touching a touch screen or clicking a mouse to make choices (it seems to be a psychological issue along the lines of learned helplessness or desire to avoid displeasing others) a dwell option seemed to be a possible way to circumvent the issue. There are various free...

Judy Terranova is a 20 year old from Boston who just finished her freshman year at Salem State College. She began Salem State College under the impression that she had recieved an Abigail Adams Scholarship which would cover her tuition at any four year state college or university. The Abigail Adams scholarship is award annually to Massachusetts high school graduates who score "Advanced" in two of three areas of the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System exam and at least "proficient" in the third as well as scoring in the top twenty five percent of their school district on the exam. Judy

This week a student and I logged onto the internet via her Tobii C-Eye to look for some images of her favorite books to put on her "my favorites page". Her default home page is set to the Tobii website and we saw the new Tobii S32 displayed. The SLP came over to join us are we looked at the S32 ( ok, Tobii, could you maybe get a little more creative with the naming? My students and I will happily help you out.) The Tobii S32 looks to be an upgrade from the old and discountined LEO from ATI...

Internet based AAC options seem to be a hot things right now, not as hot as the iPad, but hot just the same. (And especially hot is combined with an iPad!) For the purposes of this blog entry internet based AAC is augmentative and alternative communication which is primarily or solely created and stored on the internet (or the "cloud"). The pros of this arrangement are that you do not need to worry about backing up as much (you still need to back up), you can program while the user is still using the speech device (be it a dedicated device or an adapted tablet PC, netbook or iPad) and you

If you are like most teachers, especially if you are a "craft impaired" teacher, you are always looking for craft ideas that are new and different beyond the usual hand print turkey at Thanksgiving and vegetable print painting in the spring. Add these blogs to your RSS reader or just bookmark them to visit periodically for new ideas to try out. The Crafty Crow - with entries like "What can you do with paper tubes?" and many crafts related to children's literature this is a great blog to have on the ready Dollar Store Crafts - the name pretty much says it all Kid's Craft Weekly - is a

Most of this post is from June 7, 2008. June is National Audiobook Month, did you know that? As part of their "Get Caught Reading Campaign" the National Publishers Association has launched a "Get Caught Listening" Campaign for June. It is the perfect tie in to a Special Needs Summer Reading Program or a Summer Literacy through Listening Program. Teacher can order Get Caught Listening Posters and review Get Caught Listening for Teachers. Summer reading programs are a staple in schools. They...

Members of the Shoelaces for Teachers campaign are collecting shoelaces in honor of educators who work hard every day to help students to have a better future. These teachers understand the true meaning of education and put the needs of students ahead of politics and savory sound-bites. However, teachers could not succeed if not for the support of the community. Therefore, shoelaces are also being collected in honor of people who are speaking up on behalf of education-people who demand that teachers receive the support needed to do their job and who insist that public education remains adequately

If you are not in Massachusetts please read anyway as there is an option for you as well! Assabet Valley Collaborative, a public educational agency which provides services to children and young adults with disabilities, including severe or multiple disabilities is supporting the Wings of Hope School, a school for children with significant disabilities in Haiti. They will be having an open mic for the Wings of Hope School facilitated by interns from the music therapy program at Anna Maria College. So get out your guitar, your poetry book or just come enjoy the show: Friday May, 21st at

Intensive Sped Resources is a wiki I started a couple of years ago, yet it never really blossomed until recently. Recently it has had plenty of new members and I am hoping some folks will be interested in uploading Switch It Maker and Choose It Maker Activities, as well and Power Points for severe/profound special needs. Check it out!

From the Inclusive TLC a new environmental control unit. The best thing is it costs $195.00. Also it allows you to use one switch to turn something on and another for off - imagine the possibilities! Here are the specs from there website. Click-on is a new, fully featured control unit from Inclusive Technology. It makes it easy and safe to operate electrical appliances using switches. With two fully independent channels it can operate two appliances simultaneously using the same settings....

Well voting is over and some people have been discussing what to do now that Ning is closing free services. It is telling that people have been discussing it on Ning and via e-mail but not on Facebook! Good thing Facebook lost, it doesn't look like Facebook was a good replacement for a discussion forum! After exploring many services (about 25) and figuring out what we need/want to some degree from an administrators stand point our options now, I think, are: Leflora - more like an old school forum, old school look and set up Grouply - more like an online group, looks more like the Ning (has

Teacher's Pet is a resource sharing site along the lines of Twinkl and Mrs. Pancake. Like Twinkl it is still a new site (in case you aren't up on your UK educational scandals Twinkl and Teacher's Pet have stepped in to fill the void as many UK schools and agencies are boycotting Sparklebox.) Teacher's Pet has the usual array of signs and posters, dice and labels. There is a nice assortment of story and nursery rhyme prompts for younger learners that could be printed, laminated and have textures added to them for our learners. There are some nice feelings thermometers, self assessment fans