by Colin Hussey
Elementary students with special needs in Calcasieu
Parish Public Schools have been using the Serif Design Suite (http://www.serif.com/education)
in a variety of subject areas since school opened in fall 2009, said School
Board Technology Facilitator Mary Beth Sonnier.
“The students are
so excited to use the different software, and almost all of them have quickly
figured out how to use the programs on their own,” said Sonnier. “I’m so proud
of their growing independence. That sense of self-sufficiency can be the basis
of so many future academic and personal milestones.”
Alphabet Walks to Family
Trees
Since receiving the Design Suite,
which includes Serif’s four leading design tools – PagePlus,
WebPlus, PhotoPlus and DrawPlus – along with the helpful materials on the Teacher
Resources disc such as lesson and worksheet ideas, Sonnier has integrated them
into language arts, reading, science and social studies units, among others.
PhotoPlus and
DrawPlus, Serif’s image editing and computer drawing programs, were key elements
of an “Online Alphabet Walk” lesson. Calcasieu Parish students who were working on
approximately an age 5 language level in
a self-contained special education class, searched a set list of bookmarked,
kid-friendly web sites for photos of items beginning with a certain letter. If tasked with the letter “A,” students explored National Geographic
Kids, Scholastic’s sites or
others for a picture of an ant. They then took a screen shot of the bug, pasted
the image in the Google Docs spreadsheet and finally edited the image in
PhotoPlus.
“They love to edit
pictures, and they think it is hilarious,” said Sonnier. “They will move faces
between bodies, like exchanging their teachers’ faces and their bodies, or
moving a monkey’s head to a frog’s body. You just let them play first, and once
they are comfortable with the program they are able to accomplish much more in each lesson.”
Another project has seen
third-grade students working on a family tree project in an inclusion classroom
with both special needs and general education students. The children were asked
to bring in photos of family members or shoot their own with digital cameras checked
out from the school by the students. Using PhotoPlus, they were able to crop
pictures to focus on individual relatives and then use those images to design a
family tree in DrawPlus.
“Teachers observed an
increase to their self-esteem through their excitement to assist their peers
and their willingness and ability to remain on task,” Sonnier said.
Similar projects are being
planned for developmentally delayed students entering preschool and
kindergarten.
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