From Ponds to Multimedia

From Ponds to Multimedia

Deborah Baker works as a special education teacher in a sixth-grade blended program at Wayland-Cohocton Middle School in Wayland, New York. She shares teaching responsibilities for about 40 children with two regular education teammates, Ann Boss and John Crossett. Nearly one-third of the youngsters the three teachers work with have classified disabilities. One child is blind. Others have Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder or receptive-expressive speech impairments. "We don't run any pull-out programs," explains Baker. "We try to provide student services directly in the regular classroom." All students participate in activities involving technology. The computer serves as the perfect venue for challenging simulations and problem-solving. For example, with the Tom Snyder Production program, Decisions, Decisions: Environment, youngsters at all ability levels work together to solve the problem of pond pollution. "The technology provides a visual stimulus and a storyline that they can follow," says Baker, "and motivates the students to think critically about the issues while providing opportunity for decision-making." The simulation fits perfectly with the team's science unit on pond life but it doesn't stop there. Baker says that teachers also use it during English class because it gets the students excited about "writing persuasive pieces to congressmen and local agencies on the importance of preserving the environment." The benefits of using technology to supplement and extend the learning process are many and varied, suggests Baker. This is evident in computer-based projects students have completed using Roger Wagner's multimedia authoring package, HyperStudio. The students work individually or in teams to create "cards," which are then assembled into a larger project. In a recent example, each student was given a common noun related to geography. He or she had to come up with a definition, sentence, and picture to illustrate the noun. The resulting pages were incorporated into a HyperStudio "stack" on geography terms. It's not, explains Baker, that the students all produce "absolutely wonderful pieces of work. That's what I expected at first, but in all honesty, it's not always what happens. The technology is most helpful as a stimulus. It motivates them to solve problems and make decisions in ways that would not have been possible in a regular classroom." At Wayland-Cohocton, technology and inclusion afford an important opportunity for social interaction. When working on a multimedia HyperStudio project, disabled students sit side by side with regular students at the computers. Baker notes that they sometimes figure out how the software works or how to program a button before the regular education students sitting next to them. These successes boost their self-confidence,