Keene State College / MCST Transition Resources

"Assistive technologies have become commonplace in consumer electronics-in fact, they make up a $30.5 billion industry that's expected to grow fast, as baby boomers' vision and hearing begin to fail. But those bells and whistles are byproducts of the efforts made by educational technology developers to design and refine assistive technology tools that remove barriers to learning for children suffering from a range of disabilities."

"A lessoncast is a spreadable example of the what, why, and how of effective teaching. Lessoncasts feature one lesson idea or management strategy in 2 minutes 30 seconds or less. Lessoncasts include teacher-created downloadable resources to help implement the ideas. A lessoncast is NOT a lesson plan, but rather a quick how-to overview meant to inspire and support teachers looking for effective resources."

Have you been hearing a lot about subtypes of LD lately? Perhaps it's just that I've been especially alert to it, but it seems I've heard a lot of mentions about subtypes of Learning Disabilities in the last few weeks. Here are a few foundational comments about subtyping LD.

Wall Street's excesses blew up the economy. Now the question is who pays to clean up the mess. Across the country, our children are already paying part of the bill -- as their schools are hit with deep budget cuts. A new report -- Starving America's Public Schools: How Budget Cuts and Policy Mandates are Hurting our Nation's Students -- released today by the Campaign for America's Future and the National Education Association, looks at five states to detail what this means to kids in our public elementary and secondary schools. (Full disclosure: I co-direct the Campaign.) The findings are sobering.

"Universal Design for Learning is a set of principles for curriculum development that give all individuals equal opportunities to learn. UDL provides a blueprint for creating instructional goals, methods, materials, and assessments that work for everyone--not a single, one-size-fits-all solution but rather flexible approaches that can be customized and adjusted for individual needs."

"Realizing the full potential of the internet - universal access to research, education, full participation in culture, and driving a new era of development, growth, and productivity."

Sync with ipad

Have you ever wanted a simple and convenient way to track attendance for your group or classroom? Well, now there's a way. MyAttendanceTracker.com is an online attendance tracker and it will help simplify the tedious task of keeping attendance. Some of the site's key features: *It's free! *Track attendance online from home or work or school *Easy to use interface to enter attendance data *Import Tools allow you to load your entire class list in minutes *Reports you'll love *Export data to Excel or download reports as PDFs

"This site will be both a support site for my presentations about iPad use for teaching and learning and it also includes links to other iPad information pages."

"NCIPP created program descriptions for three innovative districts with induction and mentoring programs targeted at beginning special education teachers. Program descriptions were the result of extensive interviews with mentors, beginning teachers, principals and program administrators, as well as program data analysis and videos of mentoring sessions."

mcst-assessment mcst-employment

The Wisconsin Post High School Outcomes Survey (WPHSOS) assesses the outcomes of individuals with disabilities one year after they have exited high school. Former students are contacted for a telephone interview to assess areas independent living, participation in postsecondary education, employment, and high school IEP planning.

mcst-assistive-technology onlinetools

This toolkit has been developed by an ad hoc team comprised of a small representation of individuals from across the state working in Centers for Independent Living (CIL), Local Education Agencies (LEA) and Vocational Rehabilitation (VR). The goal was to create a resource tool to enhance collaboration in transition planning for young adults with disabilities. A special acknowledgement to members of these three organizations for the many valuable resources and links included in this toolkit.

"Jo Handelsman remembers the moment she realized something was seriously wrong with the way science was taught. She was an undergraduate at Cornell University in her junior year, sitting in a biology lecture with an unusually good professor. "It suddenly occurred to me that every idea I had memorized or learned or thought I understood in a textbook was actually the result of scientific investigation," said Handelsman, who is now a professor at Yale. "And that just floored me." She also couldn't help thinking why she hadn't realized this before. "What was missing that it took me so long?""