What technology does your dc use at school?

[anonandlikeit]

ds2 is in yr 2, has mild CP, very floppy hands & wrists & Austism.
The thing is all the teachers, psychs etc all agree that his undrstanding is great but how do we get him to share his knowledge in school.
He cannot write partly due to control & fatigue but also he has very specific reading & writting problems - he can just about write his first name.
So we could use a computer but he is still not able to spell or find the keys or read the instructions.

The next option would be for him to have a scribe & reader for him BUT his social communication is so poor he only speaks when spoken to & usually only a one or two word answer.

So how does a teacher check understanding or he share what he ahs learnt?

Is there an obvious answer that I am overlooking or is there some amazing software package that I can look at? Or is ds destined to be a bright boy with no way of showing us.

DS1 has just started using clicker 5 on a laptop at school and it's surprisingly adaptive. Words or pictures can be clicked on an the software will read out words from the word bank and it's possible for teachers (and pupils) to record messages.
www.cricksoft.com/UK/products/clicker/

Ouryve - They are going to get him started on Clicker5, is it very flexible, does it rely on alot of forward planning by the teacher to load the options in.

It needs a bit, yeah, but there's lots of free, downloadable resources already made for it. Making them specially also isn't too arduous once you know what you're doing. Much easier than making a printed worksheet with Word, in fact.

I attended the training with DS1's teacher and one of his LSA's and even though they seemed daunted at first, they've not ended up begging me for help and he has been using it and enjoying it right from the start. His reading and writing etc are actually very good, but his behavioural difficulties had been keeping him from accessing the curriculum. He's very computer literate, so it was a natural way to help to engage him. It's also giving him the support he needs with sentence structure, since when he tries to write or type freely, it's just a jumble of words.

Thanks Ouryve - the outreach team will provide training, i'm hoping ds2 will take to it.

Thanks Riven, ds2 is very physically able to speak but socially not very able so struggles to verbalise his thoughts & needs.

He has a simplified keyboard so hopefully it should make it easier for him to locate keys.

He did seem to like the voice on Clicker so maybe he would find it a help.
He is still at the stage where he needs every word read to him but has reasonable mouse control.

Its just that he is not able to express himself or share any thoughts or opinions that are not programmed - but I suppose thats what I want, his ASD i'm guessing means he actually doesn't care anyway

Thats reassuring RIVEN, I would love him just to share a piece of news with us... He was star of the week at school a few weeks back & was given a ruler & rubber, I asked him about it & he said nothing. Only when I took the ruler & rubber back to school, thinking he'd nicked it did I find out he was star of the week!
When DS2 was going through ASD assessment the paed actually told me there was no link to his prematurity or to his CP - what a load of bollocks!