Web+2.0+Helps+LD+Students+Get+Organized

1 line topic summary: Web 2.0 helps LD students get organized
Students with learning disabilities often have a hard time with “organizing, planning, keeping track of time, remembering information, and keeping track of multiple tasks.” These students often need to use multiple strategies or tools to help them with planning and organization. Some tools that often help are daily planners, checklists, calendars, and other forms of organizers. Web 2.0 applications can often provide such tools, and I believe students would prefer using the Web 2.0 tools over the other being that it is a technology era. First of all there are online to-do lists and task applications such as Twitter and Google Calendar which can help notify students of tasks, allow them to organize those tasks, and even share them with others. There are online calendars such as Google Calendar and Assign-a-day that can help parents stay in the loop with students’ assignments and projects. Color coding is available to help students organize material plus students can receive email or text message reminders as due dates approach.

Students with learning disabilities often have a hard time with in-depth assignments. They struggle with keeping track of information. There are some Web 2.0 tools which can help them take notes and keep track of information. Such tools include Diigo and EverNote. Diigo allows students to highlight text, tag information, and organize bookmarks. EverNote allows students to clip text and images from a webpage for notes, create sticky notes, use cell phones to read to-do lists, and record audio notes.

Web 2.0 tools can really help LD students with their planning and organization. Barriers would present themselves if these students weren’t shown how to properly use such tools. Plus some students may feel overwhelmed by the complexity of such applications. Overall, I believe these tools/applications would be very useful to LD students if presented to them in an effective manner.

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 * Web2.0 helps LD Students Get Organized (first modification)**

Two main area of difficulty for students with executive functioning is homework. It’s hard enough for a student without a disability to find the value in an assignment, have the motivation and time to complete it, as well as the ability to keep track of it all, from getting the assignment, to completing it, to saving it, to turning it back in. This is a challenge many middle school students face daily. However, there are two amazing resources to help with the two main phases of the homework process. They are keeping track of all the work and test/quiz/due dates as well as adequately preparing for these things. The following two web2.0 resources can help students will disabilities, and all students, to achieve when it comes to homework.

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Students with learning disabilities struggle to maintain organization in their educational environment. Often lack of homework completion reduces a student’s average and overall performance in a class. Apps and programs such as myHomework can alleviate this concern, which would overall increase a student’s success. Every time a student misses an assignment and their grade drops, so does their motivation. For kids with learning disabilities and executive functioning challenges this creates a negative spiral effect. Often these students want to succeed and are not trying to not turn in their work, but they simply can’t get themselves to copy it off the board in time and still listen to the teacher. Online postings by the teacher on websites or wikis are great, but an app such as myHomework can really help students succeed in their academics. This app allows for instant access of homework assignments which sync to any device (computer, iPod, iPad, iPhone, etc.) and has a great and easy to manage calendar. This provides reminders as well as a list of late, upcoming, and complete assignments. This built in system of organization can have dramatic impacts on a student’s success as well as their motivation. This same app can be used as universal design in districts with iPad access for all students.

Once you help students manage their assignments and keep track of their daily homework comes the challenge of helping them synthesize this practice (through homework) into preparing to demonstrate their mastery of concepts on tests/quizzes.

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Quizlet.com is an exceptional web2.0 tool that will increase success in studying for students with executive functioning disabilities. It allows for the creation of flash cards by the student, teacher, or aide, which can easily be organized by subject and date so that these students never loose their study resources. In addition to ease of storage and impossible to lose benefits, this site also allows for photo and audio practice. This can help those students utilize many different input modes to maximize their ability to learn information. In addition, there are also interactive games and ready to go assessments to help increase student motivation and help them determine when they are ready to be assessed. In addition, their learning is naturally differentiated through this tool as they are given constant grading and feedback throughout their studying process.

Barriers: With any resource there are potential accessibility barriers. For example, space race, a component of the studying resource in Quizlet, requires students to type at quick speeds. This can be both a challenge, but an advantage to this program. However, if a student was not able to move their fingers quickly and accurately, this would be an unmotivating and frustrating option as opposed to one which motivates through race, games, competition, and instant feedback. However, this particular student could utilize the voice option for studying. For almost any learning barrier, there is an option on this site for all learners and allows access for all disabled students through one mode or another.


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[|The Reluctant Learner, the Behavioral Problem, the Special Ed Student . . . HELP, What Do I Do?]

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executive functioning web 2.0 tools