Group items tagged

collect, manage, and cite your research sources.

Whether it be researching and creating spreadsheets with data, generating graphs or charts, or creating Web scavenger hunts, ideas abound for using technology in your social studies class today

it is extremely important that they get a solid basis of understanding of the man, his times, the Elizabethan culture, and the theater of his day.

This curriculum web is designed to help students synthesize all of the information they have gathered in a unit of study on Romeo and Juliet and present it in a creative way that requires them to work collaboratively.

Today’s students must know how to navigate the World Wide Web, search for needed information, and filter through unreliable sources. By requiring them to research using the Internet, students will gain and enhance these skills.

I created a music based teaching system called Sounds into Syllables® which is designed to assist these children with their communication and social development difficulties by teaching them how to spell, read, classify words and correctly identify the facial expressions for six universal emotions. Part 1 of the system applies the musical component of ‘pitch’ or ‘tone’ to the process of learning letters and words. The child learns to listen to the letters as musical sounds as well as spoken sounds. With the mastery of the alphabet, the child begins to learn 26 different nouns (animal names). The senses of touch, sight and hearing are further integrated with the introduction of textured words, drawings and sound effects. There is an accompanying teaching book entitled A to Z Animal Book as well as a companion CD and A to Z Animal Workbook. In Part 2 of the system, the 26 animal nouns are matched to 26 related verbs such as dog/bark and lion/roar. There is a second book entitled Animals in Action with the textured words and drawings of the animals in their passive and active states. The child learns the related verbs in the same way he/she learned the nouns. To establish the conceptual relationship between the animal and its action, an animated computer program has been designed specifically for the teaching system. Part 3 of the system addresses the difficulties of social interaction, by emphasizing face perception and emotion recognition. Musical harmony is introduced with the creation of six three-part harmonies each linked to the six universal emotions of happy, sad, afraid, angry, surprised and disgusted. In addition, three two-part harmonies have been created and linked to nouns, verbs and adjectives to further expand word classification for the purpose of sentence creation. These three and two-part harmonies as well as the musical alphabet have been integrated into a forty page book called The Story of Little Bear. Textured letters and color coding are used throughout the book which has also been formatted as a computer book with a number of additional features, such as rollover images and animations. In October, 2006 I implemented a research study with a group of 20 children ranging in age from 6 to 17 who were diagnosed with various forms of autism. The criteria for participation in the study were demonstrated interest in music or musical stimuli and limited or no letter/word recognition. This longitudinal study in ongoing however preliminary results are encouraging. In addition, the system is benefiting a group of children who are diagnosed with learning disabilities other than autism.

One of the strongest evidence-based practices is Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA), which has over 20 years of research showing effectiveness for children with autism.It is important to note that when I say “ABA”, I am not speaking exclusively about Discrete Trial Training (DTT). Rather, I am talking about a very large field of science which focus on using the principles of behavior analysis to change behavior in order to make society a better place. This field is not specific to autism, in fact, many parenting books, marriage books, and addiction books focus on the principles of behavior analysis to help people. In autism, DTT is one type of ABA that has shown effectiveness. Other types of ABA, such as Pivotal Response Training (PRT) use more naturalistic teaching strategies and have also shown effectiveness for remediating certain symptoms of autism.

Equipment and Software For general availability to the largest audience, the computer implementation was done for a low end PC using web standard JAVA Script. The lessons work on all versions of Netscape and Internet Explorer 4.0 and later and do not require any plug-in software, graphics hardware or special set-up by the users before playing. The exception is that the user may choose to reset his screen to display 600 by 800 pixels. Lessons also play on MAC systems, although at a slightly increased rate. All programs were coded with time lines and customized functions to incorporate specialized screen actions and responses. In-house software was designed to create play arrangements to teach effectively while avoiding a known pattern recognition by the students. Live images of people using the items or doing the actions were processed as minimum sized animated GIFs, with a standard sequence of three flowing images, to simulate live action within the computer-generated images.