Day One of Course

Dear readers

I cannot believe I am writing a blog.  Helen Himsl and technology are becoming one!  He he.  Not quite, but I am hoping more so by the end of this class.  I have a learned helplessness about computer technology, because I have a cousin who will step in and save the day for me whenever I need help, but now I am forging out on my own in a different province.

I had my first day of summer classes.  I was quite nervous prior to them starting, but they both were awesome!  I am super excited by both.  The assistive technology course seems like it will be life changing (I have a theatre degree, so I am a tad dramatic) to me as a teacher.  I will take a lot back with me that the kids at school are going to really dig.  Outside of class seems promising also.  My boyfriend's mom is severely hearing impaired (85% loss in one ear, 65% loss in the other).  Barb has had (and lost) 3 hearing aids in the last few years, so now will not get one, even though everyone is encouraging her to.  She is worried she will lose her new one as well.  :) There tends to be a lot of misunderstood information and communicating is a problem. I was intrigued by the possibility of an ipod having hearing aid possibilities - maybe this can be of some help to Barb and us in communicating with her.  I happily got on the phone last night and the hearing aid app is one of the first things that I talked about.

I am still figuring out the ipod touch. I am staying at my dad's while here; he works away in Indonesia.  With the internet being left for so long, it took a while to get everything up and running.  I think all is figured out now, but I am going to have to spend some serious alone time with the ipod touch on Tuesday night, as it is a new piece of technology for me.

We were assigned some readings - David Sousa's How the Special Needs Brain Learns and Sally Shaywitz' The Education of Dyslexic Children from Childhood to Young Adulthood.  What interesting articles.  The articles closely mirrored each other in content:  there are early warning signs of a learning disability, namely that children with language impairments often had trouble reading; boys are over-identified while girls face the opposite dilemma; reading is not an innate ability in humans, rather it is something introduced only 5000 years ago; brain scans of children with dyslexia show remarkable differences from those without, implying that  these students are memorizing words instead of easily reading them - important to note as this is a much more laborious task than quickly reading a page.  It is all so very intriguing and I cannot wait to learn more.  The learning to read bit made me think of a Tarzan episode I watched when I was a kid.  He was left alone, came across a home/ cottage with books, picked them up and taught himself to read.  I remember being in grade four and thinking that this was not possible.  All these years later, I now have some data to back me up that I was right. Good times.

Day two awaits!