Clever Badges (K-3 and Special Needs Students) allow easier access to Chromebooks

The IT department has started rolling out Clever badges for easier login to Chromebooks.  Badges will be issued for K-3 with some special exceptions on a case by case basis.  Melissa Limm and the fine IT staff understood the need to have the badges accessible to some high needs students.  Thank you for making this possible.

https://sites.google.com/apps4pps.net/clever/home

For IOS login:
https://support.clever.com/hc/en-us/articles/115003629943-How-do-I-use-Clever-on-iOS-

Handwriting and Brainwaves

PENCILS AND BRAINWAVES: AN ANALYSIS ON HANDWRITING AND MEMORY

On September 25, 2013 in General by Timothy Huneycutt

This week we reached out to our Director of Elementary Development, Freddie Kendrick – you may remember reading about her efforts to transform elementary teaching – and she provided us with a wealth of insight into the benefits of handwriting. There’s a lot more to writing things out than initially meets the eye, but we’ll let Freddie explain it herself:

~*~

[Freddie] Despite the fact that more and more people are communicating through text, and even though technology is making an increasingly significant impact on our classrooms, handwriting is an invaluable skill to teach and master. In fact, the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) actually include standards for legible manuscript writing in kindergarten and first grade. However, there is no mention of it elsewhere in the other grade levels that I have found, and this is a travesty that should be reversed.

Current research shows an important relationship between writing by hand and learning. For example, in a Wall Street Journal article, Gwendolyn Bounds linked brain scans and behavioral testing together and found that participants who wrote out new letterforms instead of using a keyboard to type them out actually hadincreased brain activity. In the article, titled “How Handwriting Trains the Brain,” Bounds elaborates on this finding and discusses how information written by hand stimulates the brain and increases the retention of that written information.

Handwriting is much more than learning how to use a pencil. It is a tool with which our students can hone some of the most critical learning skills, skills that they will be using for the rest of their lives! In the book,Teaching with the Brain in Mind, Eric Jensen – a professional colleague of mine – writes that excessive stress and threat in the school environment may be the single greatest contributor to impaired academic learning. A multi-sensory handwriting program relaxes the emotional brain to reduce stress levels in students and improve learning. I also asked him for a little more insight into his thoughts on handwriting, and he provided me with an excellent quote:

“Two generations ago, 95% of people in America used handwriting. Today, most use keyboarding. Yet the skills of handwriting remain important. They are memory, focus, prediction, attention, sequencing, estimation, patience and creativity.”  

click below for full article here: 

http://nms.org/Blog/TabId/58/PostId/179/pencils-and-brainwaves-an-analysis-on-handwriting-and-memory.aspx

also see: http://www.naesp.org/sites/default/files/MJ12%20Berninger.pdf

A Request to Lego

Please help lobby Lego to make conductive (Maker) Legos by sharing this article/request.

"As an educator and assistive technology practitioner I work on ways to improve access for kids with disabilities.  One technique my colleagues and I use involves using a small micro controller (MakeyMakey) in conjunction with conductive materials (e.g. bananas, clay, etc) to make customized switches.  These switches can automate a voice, turn on a light, or play a song. 

I was excited to hear about Legos commitment to reducing the use of plastics and moving toward a more bio-degradable alternative.  Partly for the environmental reasons and partly for the hope that Legos could some day be conductive, allowing kids and AT practitioners alike to make tools for kids with disabilities.  

I'm writing in hopes that you might be able to consider using conductive materials in developing the next generation of Lego.  It would certainly open a lot of doors for our kids.

Thank you kindly for your time and consideration,"

Pete Carpenter (occupational therapist, father, and Lego fan) 

If you have thoughts or questions, please add to the comments section below.