"Ms. Davies" iShare Classroom
The story of a
special education classroom
"Ms Davies" is a special educator who teaches 11 middle school students with developmental disabilities and specific learning
disabilities in a resource room setting. Ms Davies’ students had been unsuccessful in their attempts to use email and other social networking tools because of literacy and pragmatic communication challenges.
Our solution was to introduce iShare to Ms. Davies' classroom. We gave each of Ms. Davies’ students a USB drive that hung on a
lanyard and contained iShare individualized for the students. All of the students learned to use iShare and independently initiated exchanging emails
with classroom peers and teachers. The most notable finding was the unanticipated high number of emails that were sent over the 12-week observation
period. Students sent 1,323 emails! Ms. Davies reported that email was a highly motivating modality to work on writing and social communication skills. She
reported that iShare helped to improve spelling and grammar. The students liked email because it helped them make friends with other students in their class.
Ms. Davies’ comments illustrate why iShare was so helpful:
- Writing prompts and quick feedback, along with the ability to review and edit their messages resulted in improved writing performance. Ms Davies noted "Students are better able to recognize spelling, grammar, capitalization and punctuation errors in text than in their
own handwriting, so they are more willing to make changes that clarify their ideas. While there are still issues with generating topics and complete
sentences for students with language or cognitive challenges, the email and Blog programs provide prompts and supports that increase the likelihood that
they will participate, and the goal is to wean them from adult assistance as they demonstrate some level of independence. Also, I could more quickly give
them feedback when everything was electronic.
- The students were motivated to use their best writing because they were communicating with peers.Ms Davies reported,“Students were reinforced by peer replies to their email initiations, and enjoyed the public debriefing of the blog, a validation of their engagement and of their opinions.
- Ms Davies
liked that iShare’s concrete communication record helped when she gave feedback
to the students. Ms Davies noted "I
especially like the opportunity the program provides for me to counsel
students, as finding a time to have a quality conversation in private is rare
on most days, and it is an advantage for providing feedback to students who are
defensive about addressing behaviors that interfere with our learning
environment. The students who have emotional issues can take time to process
the feedback, and have demonstrated a reduced probability of becoming angry or
acting out."
- It was efficient to integrate writing activities with social skills instruction. Ms Davies noted, "There are social skills programs available, and I have used parts of them to teach specific skills, and I know that our speech and language therapist works with students on social communications, but email and the blog increase our ability to model, teach and provide feedback on socially-appropriate communication. The immediacy and the authenticity of the email and blog reflect how most communication occurs in our culture. It is giving them skills for the workplace as well as a vehicle for social networking."