The CORE Education eFellowship Awards recognise innovative e-learning practice by New Zealand teachers.
View more stories from CORE Education eFellows in the eFellows EDtalks channel
The CORE Education eFellowship Awards recognise innovative e-learning practice by New Zealand teachers.
View more stories from CORE Education eFellows in the eFellows EDtalks channel
Linda Lehrke, a 2011 CORE Education eFellow, researched how assistive technology can help students with special education needs become competent learners. She provides the challenge that we need to understand the learner and stop worrying about the disability; we need to explore how technology can open up learning for our students; and we need to challenge our assumptions and beliefs that are barriers to student learning.
HI I'm Linda Lehrke, I'm the director of ICT at Sommerville Intermediate School in Auckland. My role is teaching primarily in the technology curriculum and managing the network and the PD within the school.
I applied for an eFellowship this year in order to help me with my research into students with special needs and how assistive technology can help them become competent capable learners.
I've been concerned in the past that many of the students who come with learning disabilities or impairments are robbed of an opportunity to learn. I look back into the past at people with cleft palates. In my childhood they often would be considered disabled or slow learners, yet with a small operation in their childhood their learning changed. Basically it wasn't their intelligence it was a physical disability separating them from learning.
We have amazing assistive technologies today and matching those up with students with special needs means we can do the same for them that a simple operation did for a child with a cleft palate.
I've worked closely with two children, one with cerebal palsy, who communicated with the world, to the world, with a wand. We have put her onto an ipad, created a device with a whole lot of tinfoil and plastic to begin with but we have got much smarter now which has allowed her to be cool, because she has an iPad, and to communicate with the world on her own. So her teacher aide is no longer standing beside her moving the mouse, she surfs the Internet, she has read her first book, she tweets and now she is quite a famous blogger with over 2,800 hits on her blogsite where she shares what, up until now, has been locked within a really amazing 12 year old young lady's body.
We have also got a visually impaired young lady who we have taken away the big clunky devices that she has been using until now, put her on an iPad with a nice pink cover and really pink cool headphones attached to it and we are opening up her world as well. She is quite amazing, I met her last year as a year six student and she wouldn't talk to me because she didn't communicate very well with the world. I have trouble now keeping her off my knee as she tells me about the amazing things she is doing with her technology.
A couple of things that my research this year has pulled out for me and has floated to the top, is that we need to understand the learner and stop worrying about the disability. We need to understand how we can use the technology in order to bring learning to the student and open the student up to that learning. The third thing that really has come to me this year is that we have to start challenging those assumptions and beliefs that are stopping our children from learning because, "hey they had a cleft palate, they'll never learn", "they're clinically blind they can't use an iPad, they won't see". They're sight impaired, they can see and if we give them the right devices then we can free them up for the learning that we as able bodied people get as a natural privilege.
Linda Lehrke, a 2011 CORE Education eFellow, researched how assistive technology can help students with special education needs become competent learners. She provides the challenge that we need to understand the learner and stop worrying about the disability; we need to explore how technology can open up learning for our students; and we need to challenge our assumptions and beliefs that are barriers to student learning.
HI I'm Linda Lehrke, I'm the director of ICT at Sommerville Intermediate School in Auckland. My role is teaching primarily in the technology curriculum and managing the network and the PD within the school.
I applied for an eFellowship this year in order to help me with my research into students with special needs and how assistive technology can help them become competent capable learners.
I've been concerned in the past that many of the students who come with learning disabilities or impairments are robbed of an opportunity to learn. I look back into the past at people with cleft palates. In my childhood they often would be considered disabled or slow learners, yet with a small operation in their childhood their learning changed. Basically it wasn't their intelligence it was a physical disability separating them from learning.
We have amazing assistive technologies today and matching those up with students with special needs means we can do the same for them that a simple operation did for a child with a cleft palate.
I've worked closely with two children, one with cerebal palsy, who communicated with the world, to the world, with a wand. We have put her onto an ipad, created a device with a whole lot of tinfoil and plastic to begin with but we have got much smarter now which has allowed her to be cool, because she has an iPad, and to communicate with the world on her own. So her teacher aide is no longer standing beside her moving the mouse, she surfs the Internet, she has read her first book, she tweets and now she is quite a famous blogger with over 2,800 hits on her blogsite where she shares what, up until now, has been locked within a really amazing 12 year old young lady's body.
We have also got a visually impaired young lady who we have taken away the big clunky devices that she has been using until now, put her on an iPad with a nice pink cover and really pink cool headphones attached to it and we are opening up her world as well. She is quite amazing, I met her last year as a year six student and she wouldn't talk to me because she didn't communicate very well with the world. I have trouble now keeping her off my knee as she tells me about the amazing things she is doing with her technology.
A couple of things that my research this year has pulled out for me and has floated to the top, is that we need to understand the learner and stop worrying about the disability. We need to understand how we can use the technology in order to bring learning to the student and open the student up to that learning. The third thing that really has come to me this year is that we have to start challenging those assumptions and beliefs that are stopping our children from learning because, "hey they had a cleft palate, they'll never learn", "they're clinically blind they can't use an iPad, they won't see". They're sight impaired, they can see and if we give them the right devices then we can free them up for the learning that we as able bodied people get as a natural privilege.
Linda Lehrke, a 2011 CORE Education eFellow, researched how assistive technology can help students with special education needs become competent learners. She provides the challenge that we need to understand the learner and stop worrying about the disability; we need to explore how technology can open up learning for our students; and we need to challenge our assumptions and beliefs that are barriers to student learning.
HI I'm Linda Lehrke, I'm the director of ICT at Sommerville Intermediate School in Auckland. My role is teaching primarily in the technology curriculum and managing the network and the PD within the school.
I applied for an eFellowship this year in order to help me with my research into students with special needs and how assistive technology can help them become competent capable learners.
I've been concerned in the past that many of the students who come with learning disabilities or impairments are robbed of an opportunity to learn. I look back into the past at people with cleft palates. In my childhood they often would be considered disabled or slow learners, yet with a small operation in their childhood their learning changed. Basically it wasn't their intelligence it was a physical disability separating them from learning.
We have amazing assistive technologies today and matching those up with students with special needs means we can do the same for them that a simple operation did for a child with a cleft palate.
I've worked closely with two children, one with cerebal palsy, who communicated with the world, to the world, with a wand. We have put her onto an ipad, created a device with a whole lot of tinfoil and plastic to begin with but we have got much smarter now which has allowed her to be cool, because she has an iPad, and to communicate with the world on her own. So her teacher aide is no longer standing beside her moving the mouse, she surfs the Internet, she has read her first book, she tweets and now she is quite a famous blogger with over 2,800 hits on her blogsite where she shares what, up until now, has been locked within a really amazing 12 year old young lady's body.
We have also got a visually impaired young lady who we have taken away the big clunky devices that she has been using until now, put her on an iPad with a nice pink cover and really pink cool headphones attached to it and we are opening up her world as well. She is quite amazing, I met her last year as a year six student and she wouldn't talk to me because she didn't communicate very well with the world. I have trouble now keeping her off my knee as she tells me about the amazing things she is doing with her technology.
A couple of things that my research this year has pulled out for me and has floated to the top, is that we need to understand the learner and stop worrying about the disability. We need to understand how we can use the technology in order to bring learning to the student and open the student up to that learning. The third thing that really has come to me this year is that we have to start challenging those assumptions and beliefs that are stopping our children from learning because, "hey they had a cleft palate, they'll never learn", "they're clinically blind they can't use an iPad, they won't see". They're sight impaired, they can see and if we give them the right devices then we can free them up for the learning that we as able bodied people get as a natural privilege.
The CORE Education eFellowship Awards recognise innovative e-learning practice by New Zealand teachers.
View more stories from CORE Education eFellows in the eFellows EDtalks channel
Blended e-Learning Facilitator Chrissie Butler, talks about the BLENNZ Learning Library. The Blind and Low Vision Education Network NZ (BLENNZ) is a school that is made up of a national network of educational services for children and young people who are blind, deafblind or have low vision.
Jan Heffernan, Deputy of the junior school at Brisbane Boy's College, talks about differentiating technology to suit the needs of their students. Jan outlines their use of technology to allow students with learning difficulties to be independent learners in the classroom.
Kenakena School principal Bruce McDonald introduces Janet Pirie Hunter who has established a dyslexia programme for visual-spatial learners in the school and local community.
