Teacher Learning and Leadership Program: Where is My Pencil?

When our TLLP team arrived back at school in September, it felt a bit like Christmas; our equipment order from Bridges had arrived over the summer months and, as a result, we had lots of new 'toys' to keep us busy! There was only one problem: much like trying to operate a complicated new toy without without first reading the instructions, we found ourselves a little at a loss for how to begin setting up and using our new technology. (And as we all know, technology is only as smart as the people using it!) Luckily, we have lots of smart and knowledgeable people to help us along our way! On September 26th, Allison, Deb and I met again with Kim from Bridges. She provided us with some very helpful PD on how to best begin using technology such as Grid 3, Look To Learn and  ChooseIt 3.  Following, is a snapshot of our learning and new information: Look To Learn- Deb has been trialing with Josie and Jaycie in her class. Josie is very responsive to activities on Look To Lear...

Today, our group met with Kim Mitchell from Bridges to discuss recommendations for technology to support students' writing. Some of the options we looked at included: 1. Look to Learn- it is an app for training students to use eye gaze through games and orienting activities 2. My Gaze? 3. Sym Writer- is similar to Clicker but uses symbols and has a larger library of vocab and pictures 4. Communicate in Print- is similar to Boardmaker and is a teacher tool 5. Eye Learn Rolling Package- is a complete eye gaze system that includes most components needed- it is expensive at $5795 but would be a great tool to investigate for students with complex communication and movement needs 6. Cowriter- is intuitive, has analytics, web scraping for topic dictionaries 7. Grid 3 We looked at a lot of information about various tech options and have written info in our TLLP binder. We are motivated to explore the "power of access' We will be determining what tech to order over the n...