About One Best Thing: One Best Thing is a collection of books created by Apple Educators that demonstrate how to use Apple technologies to teach and learn in the classroom. Each book shares a unit, lesson, or best practice and is designed to help educators implement successful practices. This is a space where educators can get ideas from other educators to create new and improved lessons to their students.
Reaching All Learners: Utilizing Student Interests to Empower Accessibility: This book is truly inspiring. Craig Smith is an educator of students on the Autism Spectrum. To get his students really interested in the curriculum and to be the standards, he focuses on the students interest to create lessons that they will be engaged with and enjoy. Smith first takes lets his students teach him. They teach him about subjects they enjoy and have knowledge about. This includes Minecraft, Dinosaurs, Pokemon etc. Once Smith has learned what his students enjoy, he then takes those topics and creates activities and projects that relate to the students interests. In this case they created a 40 minute film explore each of the students interest. Smith makes sure he hits all the objective while make it fun for the students such as making sure the students learn -social skills -facial recognition -receptive and expressive communication -self reflection -storytelling options At the end of the film making process, Smith holds a red carpet premiere for his students to display their hard work. I think this is something I could definitely implement in my own classroom. Under the right topic/standard to make sure students are still learning the curriculum, this could be a very fun project the class can work on throughout the year. |
Smith got the students involved with many apps to create this film:
Gamers 2 Trailer from Platinum Pictures on Vimeo.
Craig Smith is an Australian educator and is a huge advocate for children's on the Autism Spectrum. His passion is researching and implementing creative educational best practices for children and young people with Autism. He works for Autism Spectrum Australia (Aspect) and he frequently presents on autism, pedagogy and technology at national and international conferences. His website, Autism Pedagogy, collects together some key resources he utilizes at conferences and workshops, and a blog and podcast where he discuss's innovations in autism education best practices.