Joel Barde's personal website

I wanted to use this reflection to discuss something I have been thinking about a lot and how technology can be used with regards to it.

For my inquiry project for the field visit class, I presented ways that teachers can make their classrooms more friendly to students with ADHD by applying certain strategies, such as providing movement breaks and crystal-clear instructions.

I was truly blown away with the reception I got from students, and specifically with a couple of students who had ADHD themselves. They seemed to really resonate with the presentation and chose to interview me afterwards. This experience taught me that disclosing my own ADHD and the challenges I have experienced can be quite helpful in a classroom context.

Given this, I wanted to think about a few good tools that can be drawn upon to help students. These are technology tools that I would find helpful and I think others would as well.

• Google docs to make lists. What if teachers took extra time to really break down assignments into their components? Add little check boxes next to them? Could coordinate with students to make sure that they follow and are doing them? This would be immensely helpful.

• Text-to-speech programs. Voice Dream will read text from many sources, including Microsoft Word and PDF files to webpages. It allows you to pause, rewind an fast forward, which is very cool.
• Notability – This looks like great notetaking software. What’s particularly cool about it is that it allows you to record a lecture while you’re taking notes, and then you can go back and listen to certain sections of the recording just by touching certain notes that yo took.

In today’s class we discussed what the future has in store for education. That is of course no easy question. In our class discussion, we talked about what could go wrong and what could go right. It’s not easy to be overly optomistic given the state of the world, let alone the rising threat of authorotianism and global warming.

With that said, it’s easy to get down on everything, and I’d like to use this space to think about what could go right. Or more specifically, what I’d like to see evolve and develop.

• I genuinely like the idea of creating a more humane work and school environment, for teachers and students alike. One of my partners suggested that the B.C. education could adopt a 4-day week. I think that this could work, for both educators and students alike.
• I would like to see a smarter use of technology in our classrooms. As we have discussed, there is tremendous potential to use technology in a way that enhances or compliments the learning experience. Michael mentioned that he’d like to see an ability to store away the computers while teaching in the computer lab. I think thhis could be phenomenal. An extention of this that I’d like to see is a ban on cell phones in classrooms. I know this may not be the most popular or progressive opinion, but I feel strongly about this. While educators can and do use them as personal computers for students, on balance they are an enormous distraction. They sap away at students ability to focus, and all too often they seem to be paying the role of a digital pacifier in classrooms. To get rid of them, there needs to be a directive from the top. Ontario has already adopted such a policy and polls show that the move would be supported here in B.C. as well.
• There would be more opportunity for co-teaching. I thought that this concept was bit hoky when I started the program, but I think in certain circumstances, co-teaching can be a fantastic. It helps draw connection between curriculum, and I think that it benefits students and teachers alike. I have thoroughly enjoyed the co-teaching I’ve done, and feel that I learn a great deal from the educators I’ve been paired with. What if there was more opportunity for this/
• I’d like to see a strong use of the outside world for all classes. Going to the same school day in, day out can be gruelling. And the natural world — as well as just cities — offer a tremendous amount of opportunities for students to learn and connect with the environment. What if the brick-and-mortar school was considered more of a home base, and students worked in pods, monitored by teachers? That would be sick 🙂

Here are some half-baked reflections of what 2040 could/should look like. Here is to hoping we get ahold of climate change and get ahold of technology so that it doesn’t control us. I lke forward to reading this in 19 years!

Tracy Humphrey’s presentation provided some excellent food for thought on interactions with students with various disabilities and ableism in society.

Perhaps my favourite piece of advice she gave was her encouragement to take the time to read IEPs and get to know the students with them.

In my own practice, I would love to make it a habit of carving out time before every course starts to spend time closely looking them over. Perhaps it may be possible to reach out to parents for students for additional info. And of course, I could talk directly to students.

Students with learning disabilities may have preferred ways of learning, and if as an educator I can help facilitate this, I would be more than happy to.

I also appreciated Humphrey’s candor about her struggles living with ADHD. As someone who was diagnosed early on, I can definitely resonate with people labelling me as a space caded or labelled. Having an invisible disability sucks, even though with the right supports you can thrive, depite having one.

A very prominent pschologist I like — his name is Thomas E. Brown, and he’s penned numerous books and teaches at Yale University— states that everyone with ADHD typically has two or three things that they really thrive at. Once they can cut out all the noise and focus in, they are able to “hyper focus” on a specific task for a prolonged period of time, allowing them to produce top quality work.

I guesse what I’m trying to say is that all students have talented and that as educators we should make an effor to recognize people’s abilities and built upon it.