Ripple Effect: You Never Know Who You Will Impact

My first real teaching job was in 1984 in Reno, Nevada. I couldn't find a public school that had any openings and I was desperate to teach. I went through the yellow pages and began to look up private academies and Christian schools. I planned on playing piano in clubs on the weekend and do my teaching during the week. I was single and didn't really know anybody except a best friend and his wife that told me I should come down and do music and teach.
I visited several private schools and left resumes and cards. One called and had a position for single room grades 5, 6, 7 and 8. I checked everything out, had an interview and was hired.
I had 7 students that first year and I remember them all - Sarah, Aurora, Lori and her brother; Leslie and her brother, and a boy that came in mid year with "issues". The interesting thing is that when I look back on it now, the kids I had, really ranged in spectrum.
I had 2 talented and gifted students that were not challenged in public school classrooms and the parents hoped to find more motivational and steroid-charged curriculum for them. I had several regular middle-of-the-road students that were cruising along without too much need for special help and then I had a few that were struggling and had learning disorders and emotional issues. They hadn't made it in the public scene and needed a smaller class sizes for more one-on-one attention and help. So this was my FIRST year - a gambit of grades and needs at the same time.
That year we did all kinds of research related project based learning. I developed a literature- based reading program and we used textbooks for science, math, social studies and spelling. My core literacy was my baby and I LOVED it.
There were internal problems in the school and the board had argued, parents were unhappy - not with me or the teaching, but with some board personalities and issues I didn't know about.
At the end of the year, they were going to close the doors.
Through a fluke of sheer luck I ended up in an elementary school with a sixth grade classroom the next fall. And guess who came to be in my class? Three of the fifth graders that had been in my room the previous year. I took that as the ultimate compliment that those parents trusted me with their student's minds two years in a row.
I taught there several years before I decided to move to Hawaii and then ended up in Asia and in an international music school for the next 7 years. I taught in Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, then on to Sydney, Australia; Capetown, S. Africa; London, Amsterdam, Budapest. I was still single and had the luxury of being able to do whatever I wanted in life at that point...sigh, those were the days!
Anyway, 24 years after my first classroom in Nevada, I got an email today. To paraphrase it, it went kind of like this... "Hi Mr. Thornburg. I did a search for you today online and found you. I was one of your students in Reno a long time ago. I am a teacher and I credit you as one of the reasons why I wanted to be a teacher. I have 2 wonderful children..."
Wow!
I am speechless. She was one of the 5th graders that followed me to the sixth grade the next year. She survived two whole years of me and I was a rookie to boot! I still represented something to her in teaching that made her choose it for her life's work. IN-credible!
I want to challenge you. Remember the movie "It's a Wonderful Life"? Remember how Jimmy Stewart realized that if he hadn't been around, things would have been a whole lot different and through the ripple effect, he impacted many lives and their offspring's lives as well. Well I kind of felt that way when I read the email today and I want you to realize that this works in your life as well.
I get emails from folks and read comments. I visit and read your blogs, so know something about you. You are wonderful. Most of you are either teachers, parents, users of AT or inventors of AT and software. You are having a HUGE impact on children and adults with disabilities. Do you know how much the ripple effect causes you to literally impact the world? It does and I want you to realize that, and let that encourage you when you feel under-appreciated. As teachers, we have the potential to make a giant impact on our world.

Now, just believe it...

All the best to you!

Lon

Lon Thornburg is an assistive technology specialist and professional development trainer who lives in Oregon and serves 12 districts in 7 counties. He hosts the No Limits 2 Learning Blog and The No Limits 2 Learning Live Talk Show on Blog Talk Radio. He is sharing as a contributing writer on LD LIVE!

Finding the Right Assistive Technology

I slid the slider with my mouse and watched the numbers roll forwards to 70%, slid the slider the other way and went to 20%. What was I selecting? The degree of summarization being applied to convert text with the PDF Equalizer from Premier Literacy. When I decided on a percentage and allowed it to summarize, a new window opened with the summarization of the text. The text reader read the text to me and my first thought was, "Where have you been all my life? Where were you in my college days?!!"
I have heard some criticism of these tools because they cost money and some folks believe there should be free tools for support and accommodation for the impaired so they can access text just like anyone else - and it shouldn't cost them. The Premier Literacy Company has their grant program to give district licenses for their software suite. Any home computers of students can use a password from the district to get that current version for free at home too. I know that once a person is out of school, they lose that school umbrella of benefit - but there are other avenues.

I for one, would LOVE to see accessibility tools for free and there are quite a few open source tools as well as free "trials" that don't expire, and also online tools for browsers, etc. But I do believe that we can either access the free basic tools and survive, or we can have some nicer tools if we choose to pay for them.The folks that design many of these programs have to make a living too - and some of them are blind or visually impaired, and this is how they make their living. I feel good knowing I am contributing to their efforts to be independent and free to provide for themselves. So I guess it all depends on how you want to look at it. Both have their merit and neither is wrong.I really don't want to make this blog a place to pitch products, but I do want to share on different tools I am testing and using, give feedback and allow readers to check out their options.
A few months ago I was working with the Microsoft tool that saves Word documents as DAISY files. With the help of the company, we were able to figure out the process of transferring a text from a Word document to a DAISY formatted talking book file. Now that was all free - except you had to have MS Word already to utilize it. (I need to work on a tutorial to explain that - I promised I would...)
This past week, I shared excitement with a high school teacher as he blew the dust off a flatbed scanner with OCR (Optical Character Recognition), scanned a worksheet, opened it up and had the Natural Reader toolbar read the scanned text to him. That was all free - except he had to have the scanner. They are as low as $60 - 70 these days.
So there are ways to get your text into an audible format - it is just that there are SO many ways that it gets overwhelming. Should I use Kurzweill 3000, Premier Literacy, free tools and my scanner? I guess it comes down to:
1. Who is the person using it?
2. Where are they going to use it?
3. What are they needing it to do?
4. What bundle of technology and software best serves the first three issues?
This is sometimes called the SETT approach: Student, Tools, Tasks & Tools.

We will be asking the above 4 questions with an elementary boy in a team setting here soon. We will be, once again, nailing down what tools to access print and writing might work for this student. Each one of these kids are different and their needs are so diverse that I need to customize my thinking one child at a time. In the meantime I can go play a little with the AT gadgets and software I manage. That's one of the reasons I love this job -and I still like that incredible summary tool!

All the best to you!

Lon

Lon is an assistive technology specialist and professional development trainer who lives in Oregon and serves 12 districts in 7 counties. He hosts the No Limits 2 Learning Blog and The No Limits 2 Learning Live Talk Show on Blog Talk Radio. He is sharing as a contributing writer on LD LIVE!

Slow Down and Let Students Accommodate for Life!

Print Disabilities provide the pleasure of teaching the use of tools and strategies that will take students and carry them on past school years and build a foundation for life. If we slow down and allow kids time to learn to use these tools the way they would really like to use them, they will actually grab onto them and begin to self-accommodate. Here is my most recent "back to school" example:I was in a high school meeting yesterday where we were designing our implementation strategy for modification and accommodation of content. The teachers have built blogs for content that are closed and secure for student access by password only. We had grand plans for amazing content and then someone stopped and commented:
"Maybe we need to wait on developing too much content and just spend the first part of fall quarter letting students spend time learning to use the text to speech tool, going to the page with all the hyperlinks to the teacher blogs for modified content, use the Mp3 download tool and save content to listen to. We need to give time for practice. We could give them some fun sample content that they could practice with."
Of course, no one could argue. We had all been discussing over-arching goals, tools to use, and content from Bookshare.org for specific students. These were good plans and necessary, but we had momentarily forgotten to slow down take a breath and allow ourselves to lay a foundation.We decided that the number one goal was to help these students with print disabilities develop a life skill of being able to use these tools for things they would need to do like reading news, accessing web sites and filling in online forms, spelling correctly, etc.
If we give students opportunities to use a text to speech tool, convert to Mp3 tool, spell checkers and use the e-text files so they can read and explore content that motivates them, then maybe they will REALLY learn how to use these tools for the reasons we want them to have them anyway. Once they have got the implementation down, then we can add more content and develop our curriculum goals. What can it hurt to let them "play" with the technology for the first 3 weeks? So we had our "Ah-ha moment" and relaxed. Now everyone is ready to explore, work on developing content, but not under so much pressure.
When you implement new technology for the first time, folks can be stressed, nervous and fear failure. If the teachers feel that way, how about the students? Some students take to tech, but for many with print disabilities, the low stress plan will really pay off. We are taking that path this next month of September and I will let you know how it goes.

All the best to you!
Lon

No Limits 2 Learning Live will host Leanne McFoose, Developer of the InterACCT system for Dynavox next Wednesday at 10 a.m. Pacific. More details to come next week.

Lon is an assistive technology specialist and professional development trainer who lives in Oregon and serves 12 districts in 7 counties. He hosts the No Limits 2 Learning Blog and The No Limits 2 Learning Live Talk Show on Blog Talk Radio. He is sharing as a contributing writer on LD LIVE!