5 Ways Teachers Are Opening Up the World to Special Education Through Technology

Meyer, L. (2016). 5 Ways Teachers are Opening Up the World to Special Education Through Technology. T H E Journal, 43(2), 6-8

On September 17^th, 2015, Global Collaboration Day, students with special needs from Sweden, Germany, Finland, South Africa, and the United States were able to share videos with each other introducing themselves and their schools. This event was planned by their special education teachers who met at a conference. The event was called the SMARTee Project. The students used SMART Amp technology to collaborate online and to teach each other about their local cultural traditions and events. The article then goes on to tell about different online global collaboration projects and how these projects are having a successful impact on students with special needs.

As the article states, teachers who work with special needs students are finding that technology can not only broaden their student’s experiences but engage them in learning, help them retain information, improve their socialization, and boost their self-esteem. I agree completely with this statement as a special education teacher myself. This article goes on to tell about the successes students have experienced with having discovered online global collaboration projects. Students who struggle with verbal communication and face-to-face socialization are feeling more engaged in conversations and the learning process through these online classrooms. The article gives a few different examples of global collaboration projects such as: the Summer Math Photo Challenge, where students post photos to illustrate weekly math concepts and the Global read aloud, where students around the world read the same book and connect online. There were many more examples of global collaborative projects in this article. The article also provides a source of free online educational resources, The Global Virtual Classroom.

I love the idea of students being able to collaborate and engage in conversations with students of varying cultural backgrounds. The article discusses the successes students feel with being able to express themselves clearly through picture clues and text translations. The article also gives an alternative, to use Twitter. Prior to this class, I had a Twitter account but wasn’t sure how to use it and I definitely didn’t know how to use in my classroom. After the experience I’ve had with Twitter, our classroom discussions, and this article- I would be interested in trying a global collaborative project on Twitter. I would be especially interested in doing a book club, where students read the same book and then respond to peers through a blog or twitter account. The possibilities are endless with technology!