Second School Placement Experience

Today I have been observing in the classroom of my field based class. I watched the main student really well to be able to determine opportunities that the student could use the Dynavox. I found many lost opportunities like when the child needed to answer any question in class. He could tell us what he wanted to play on outside, if there were programmed pictures into the Dynavox for him to choose from and if the Dynavox was around for him to use. He loves to say a few individual words every once in a while, and these could be much more frequent with the technology. He is also very “monkey see, monkey do”. This makes me think that he would do a great a job of hearing and repeating what was going on in the classroom and life, if he heard it on the Dynavox .
I also have encountered my first round of fear for what will happen, if I try to incorporate the technology into the classroom and change how an experienced teacher runs their formal classroom. I feel like I would annoy the teacher by always saying something to the effect of “we could use the Dynavox for that” or “Could they try the Dynavox with this assignment?” I really feel like the child should pick up the technology the second the class begins and never put it down. I don’t understand the idea of not using the system at all or for only really specific situations allowing the child to go use the communication device.
The classroom I am in just got a brand new computer yesterday. The problem with that is that the technology guy came to teach the teacher how to work it for like 5 minutes and that was it. After he left, we decided to use the new laptop to watch a sign language program called Signing Times. It was a Sesame Street-like program that explained the signs, showed the signs, reviewed the signs with music, and entertained the children. I want to learn how expensive the program is. I really liked it because the adults could learn the signs with the kids, and this fostered much better communication. After 30 or so minutes on the program today, we could communicate so much better with both of our non-verbal students. We learned a lot of signs like Good morning, bed, clothes, pajamas, toothbrush, brush, Wake up, floss, shirt, pants, shorts, comb, friends, and so many more. These really are only a few of the signs we learned. I believe we only watched two lessons worth.
Another way technology has been brought into this classroom is through music. The kids especially with Downs Syndrome love to sing, dance, and sign to music. This gives these students a way to learn things like the days of the week, the months, the rules, their colors, and more while not sitting at a desk. Kinetic motion is involved in the learning process, and they learn better like the chart in my last post said through doing, seeing, and hearing. Bringing music into the classroom is something that I feel is a necessity. Of course too much reliance on technology takes out the personality and individuals from the learning process. There is a balance to be struck between using too much technology and not using enough. No matter how much technology is involved there needs to be multiple people involved in the process of learning. No one wants to learn by him or herself when he or she is stuck in the corner on a computer for long periods of time. There must be interaction and lots of participation by everyone in the learning process.

(1 hr, 10 min)