Ed Tech In the SpEd Classroom

Using Technology to Help Bridge the Learning Gap

Social Studies, Teched Out…

October16

I’m not gonna lie–Social Studies was my least favorite subject when I was in middle school.

The teachers lectured and lectured, and every so often I’d get called on without having the slightest clue what the heck he was talking about.  My recollection of class would most accurately described as this.

Fast forward a few decades and here I am now teaching, or should I say re-teaching, my students with IEPs the material they’re learning now in their Social Studies class. Taught, ironically enough, by my fiance.  Back then I wanted to do well but had teachers who were (cover your ears, honey)…well, boring.  Now, these kids have access to all this technology and just lack the motivation.  I’d kill to have someone like me back then.  But then again, that’s why I do what I do now.  I’ve experienced the ugly before.

So they’re wrapping up their unit on the events that led up to the Revolutionary War.  I found this app called American Revolution History.  It’s an interactive timeline that lets students scroll through some of the events.  There are interesting tidbits as well as some awesome pictures that the kids can click on to read more about.  Right upon opening it, one of my students said, “Aw, cool!”

The students seemed to enjoy using this app.  While I did ask them to focus mainly on the points they were going to be tested on, they did check out the other interesting tidbits this app had to offer.

One other task I was finally able to do today was to record the test into an audio format using Chirbit.  If you’ve read my earlier post, you’ll remember that I had recorded an audio file on an app that I had downloaded onto the iPads.  It worked for the one student taking the test, but then I thought to myself, “What about the times that will inevitably come up where multiple students need to have a test read aloud to them? How do I transfer that recording onto multiple iPads?”  I did some research and found Chirbit. So, today I connected the Go Mic by Samson that I bought over the summer to record my (upcoming) flipped videos.  I’d been so antsy to finally use it.  One thing about Chirbit:  if you record from their website, you are only allotted 5 minutes of recording time.  I needed more than that, since it was a multiple choice test with 22 questions.  However, if you record from your Mac or PC and then upload that file onto Chirbit, your audio file can be up to 2 hours long.  Yeah.  So I recorded my test in around 13 minutes and uploaded it to my Chirbit profile.  Dunzo.  I’m excited to see the kids take it.  🙂  I so wish I had iPads to help me with Social Studies when I was a kid.  Maybe I wouldn’t have found it so boring.

Maybe.  Sorry, honey.  😉

 

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