Transitions Kids at SHS piloting Apple

Times Contributor

 

The Transitions kids at Strathmore High School have incorporated the use of iPods and iPads into their daily routine. The largely motivating tool allows the class of nine to have access to resources that would have been too expensive and unrealistic in the past. The students first began using Mac products the previous year and the assistive technology has shown to be very helpful and is being used in other areas of the school district as well.

“They use it for all sorts of things, so far this year they’ve use done Keynote presentations, they use Pages which is like Word, their schedules are put on there and  I have one student who doesn’t speak and there is a program on his iPad that is a voice for him,” said Anne Douglas, SHS Transitions teacher.

A lot of the kids have difficulty speaking and the technology allows them to communicate within the community and connect to the student body. The speech assistive technology can easily be made available to all of the Transitions kids by the simply downloading an app, whereas in previous years, the high price would have made accessing the same quality of technology impossible.

“What they’re able to do is amazing, definitely here we are lucky, we are very well supported and we have a good administration and have a really good staff in this room,” said Douglas.

The kids are also using a new program called WordQ+SpeakQ which allows the students to use their speech to help them write as well as word prediction and spoken feedback. 

“I add, I change, I improve, look at what’s working, what’s not working.  We have programs that are geared towards them specifically and so throughout our day, they spend time working on academic skills and other things like job related skills like bottle recycling. The reason we do it (is) a lot of reasons, it’s job skills, these guys need to learn how to work together, how to complete different tasks (and) how to follow steps,” said Douglas. 

The money collected from the bottle recycling helps subsidize many of the students’ programs including field trips and the lunch program, where the kids learn how to cook their own meals. 

“Our main goal of this program is independence, but also, it’s having them a part of the community. They all go into regular classes throughout the day and some of them are supported and quite a few of them go independently,” said Douglas. 

The name of the program, Transitions, comes from the program’s goal to transition the kids from school to adulthood by teaching them the life skills that they will need.  

“We definitely compare to other classes in the school. I think a lot of people see them in the hallways and don’t recognize them for how amazing they are and how they impact everyone around them, they are such an amazing part of our community,” said Douglas.

The students had a chance to pass out candy in the halls for Halloween and look forward to more fun activities, including their weekly Monday swims.

Transitions student Parker Petruska puts his iPad to use to keep an eye out for his favourite team, the Calgary Flames, through his sports app, and says he’s happy to be at SHS. “It’s a really good class.”