I had a student last week who had difficulty learning to drag a picture from one place to another on his classroom’s interactive whiteboard. His finger kept popping off of the board and he didn’t understand any of the vocabulary terms that I was using. I tried phrases such as, “keep your finger on the board,” “press harder, and “don’t take your finger off of the board.” I should have known that the last one did not work because many of my students have difficulty with terms such as not and don’t. Even though this student was verbal, I resulted to taking his hand and guiding him a few times (often called hand-over-hand assistance or full physical prompting). After a few guided trials, the student was able to move the picture a few inches. I’m sure that with even more practice he will learn the helpful skill of dragging items to desired locations on the interactive white board.
Tag: interactive white board
I previewed the “Hour of Code” project today with one of my classes. I do an “Hour of Code” every December, and many of my students really like it. I use one of the coding introductions from https://code.org/learn. Some of my students can work independently and others need a lot of help. Almost everyone enjoys going to the front of the room to work on the interactive white board. One year, several students learned their left and right hands after repeated lessons with using “Blockly” to move characters. That same year, one very academic student with autism taught himself to move beyond the Hour of Code while I was helping his classmates with the basics. My goal for some students is simply to touch or to move a block while other students are working on using the blocks to make characters move and turn. Occasionally, I get a few students who can problem solve how the blocks fit together to complete an activity. I work to make the lesson fun for whatever level each student is working on. Check out https://code.org/learn for more information about the “Hour of Code.”
Jeanne Stork, Special Education Instructional Technology 