Sunday, April 29, 2012

Thanks AOTA

Thank you for your great attention on Thursday. The turnout was great -- I'm sorry if you did not get bubbles! I hope you were able to learn something useful! What a great conference.

The PowerPoint that is on this site is more updated than the one on AOTA's webpage. The rubric is included in this PPT.

I am going to put the comments and App recommendations and comments here -- if you have additional comments, please feel free to post those in the comment section.


Apps the audience recommended 
Dolch Words  FREE. Vocabulary/Reading.
Pocket Phonics  $2.99 First Words
Mee Genius FREE. Childrens Books 
Dexteria $4.99 Fine Motor Practice
Magic Piano FREE. A magic piano
Story Kit FREE Create an electronic storybook
Sosh $39.99 Work with adolescents to improve social skills
Letterquiz $1.99 Help kids learn their letters
Doodledots FREE Creates the dots so you don't have to! 
Toontastic FREE. Create your own cartoon
Iwritewords Handwriting Game
Injini $29.99 Child Development (fine motor, sequencing, and more)

I couldn't find some of the apps listed on the yellow sheets. Please add additional ones in the comment section.


Websites:
Apppaboo.com (created by an audience member!) to help find relevant apps

Audience Feedback and Questions:
  Lock the apps you don’t want students to use (YouTube, movies, music)
Use earbuds and a microphone to help with Dragon in the iPad (Apple sells a headset that has the built-in microphone).
One audience member pointed out that Dragon recommends a 6th grade level spelling and their personal experience is that Dragon is much more effective on the desktop version than the free iPad Version.
As we pointed out, this has not been our experience with everyone we have worked with and for some, but not all, Dragon has worked better on the iPad.
Does the summer camp look at home, school, or community or just a week in isolation on campus?
We use the UKAT (University of Kentucky Assistive Technology Assessment) for all of our individuals. This comprehensive assessment seeks feedback from the school, work, and family members who are involved in the individual’s life.
For some students, they are able to learn to use the technology and have enough natural supports that we don’t need to provide ongoing support. For others, the individuals need ongoing support from us – sometimes we provide training to the job coach, teacher, or family member who supports them in addition to the individual.  


Your point is excellent – we can’t just see any individuals we work with without looking at all contexts of their life. We take students from all over Ohio so we don’t have the resources to visit all of them in advance – we bring them to us to conduct the initial evaluations and do our best to give them experiences to use their technology while they are with us in environments similar to their home, school, and work environments. For example, they have classes they attend on various topics and need to use their note-taking app, or if they are going to a restaurant at night they need to use their technology.


Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Hello AOTA!

This is the presentation link to the PowerPoint from the AOTA Conference on Thursday April 26, 2012. I hope you learned something today that will help you provide high-quality services to the individuals you serve.

I will have the additional information you contributed from the yellow sheets at conference up on this site some time before the weekend is up! 

I will see you in San Diego in 2013, but in the meantime, feel free to post comments on this site so we can continue the learning together! I have some data I hope to present next year at AOTA that shows our students and their school-based level one fieldwork educators putting the rubric into action. I will check this site regularly for the next few weeks or so, but if there is something pressing, contact me at my Ohio State email address.

My next scheduled presentation is at the Ohio OT-PT School-Based Institute this summer in Columbus, Ohio. 

If I can be of additional service to you, please contact me at The Ohio State University Division of Occupational Therapy. My email is available on Ohio State's website under faculty -- or it's also on the link to the presentation! 

My best advice to help you learn about technology for those of us non-digital natives (anyone over the age of 25) is to take a fieldwork student. They speak the 'digital' language as natives and teach me all sorts of new things every day!

Have a great time at conference.