Thats it!

All finished filed and ready to go! Which means this is probably my last post unless I decide to carry it on of course. Who knows, but it's been fun, interesting, annoying and hard but very productive and pleasing all the same! Ta ta for now x

Evaluation concluded!

     

    I thought about what he enjoys and where there could be room for improvement, so I decided to do a maths game using publisher. I thought his times table could be a good one to practice so I set out making a game using the 9 times table.  He would have to count objects to find the right answer and then drag the right number to the right answer! This again seemed a bit boring! Suddenly I had a brain wave! The one thing that the child most struggles with and needs the most support with is not an academic issue. It’s a social issue.    

   
 I decided to set out a series of questions for example ‘if someone laughs at you what do you do?’ And then give him 4 answers. Each of them he could choose quite easily but there is always one answer that is the desirable one, basically what he should do for his own happiness! I thought of doing this on publisher using pictures that can be dragged to a square but using hyperlinks from the picture to an answer. It would be visual enough for him and technical enough as he is excellent with the computer. I had it all set out and went about finding the pictures and applying the design and so on. However I didn’t like how it looked. I felt it looked basic and not very professional due to the delay when hyper linking. I decided power point would look nicer and run smoother, which it did. It hyperlinked really well and I thought it looked really professional. It took me a few hours to make both sections of the game and I was really pleased. Unfortunately while checking it I realised you can only hyperlink when the presentation is running, but you can’t move objects when the presentation is running. It was very inconvenient and annoying that I didn’t realise this before hand, however, I pushed on and set about copying and pasting over to publisher. This took a very long time and I kept incurring problems all the way through. 

  One of the main problems was that all of the answers were in a power point document which I assumed would still work for hyper linking, however this was not the case.  The folder would open up but go straight to an icon at the bottom of the screen, which wouldn’t have been suitable. Unfortunately I’m not technically minded enough to have worked out why this was happening. In response to this I decided to copy and paste it all in to publisher! When I had done this I found it awfully long winded that every time I hyperlinked id have to click on ‘yes’ then ‘ok’ before it would open up. This was due to security reasons. I thought there s no way the child I work with is going to put up with this. So I decided, for it to work and look its best I’ll copy and paste all the answer in to the same document so that the hyper linking ran smoothly. Thankfully it worked perfectly.

Evaluation

Well i finished my work last week and as I was checking everything over I realised I ve done too many words again! So rather than waste them I'm gonna use them for my blog version of my evaluation. The evaluation is only on the game not the teaching and learning. It satrts from the first Ideas to the last!

   Initially I thought of the children taking photo’s to help them write a story using the programme Clicker 5; however I then realised that we would be restricted to the school grounds so it wouldn’t be very inspiring. I thought they could look for pictures using Google; however I wouldn’t have been filling the success criteria as I wouldn’t have created a resource myself. I then decided to work with only one of the children mainly because I support him for 3 days of the week, on a one to one basis whereas the other child that would have been involved I don’t support at all. This would make my task a little simpler as the two children have very different difficulties and personalities.  Due to this I wasn’t happy with my decision to use Clicker 5. Even though Clicker 5 is a lovely programme, the child I had in mind to work with doesn’t need support with his words, story writing or imagination as he is a high functioning autistic child and very clever!

Yey!

I finally finished the game! Its only taken me about 5 days to do it! However it is finally finished. It looks and works the way I want it to and it should do. To be honest it only took so long because i did it in power point first and then realised it would n't work on powerpoint! Also had some issues with hyperlinking between different programmes so again had to do alot of copying and pasting back in to publisher. Anyway I'll stop moaning now. He'll be playing Monday and I know he'll love it mainly because its a computer game made just for him, and he does love his computer but I also added little personal touches like sonic the hedgehog pictures to click on to move to the next page, which again he'll love cos he loves sonic! So i'll write again soon once we've done it.

AAARGH!

Well it s been a while but I do have the excuse of being busy making the game and everything else that comes with it. Unfortunatley its been the biggest pain in my backside because everything that could go wrong has. Ive just spent another three hours on it only to find another hitch and more work will need to be done. The poor kid will never get to plqay it at this rate. But with all these issues its a good start for an evaluation before we ve even played it! So I give up for now and will explain more over the weekend when I have more patience!

Sorted:)

Forget what I said about the maths thing! I ve decided the only thing that would really benefit the child I work with is a social interaction game. As he's a high functioning autistic child he doesn't have trouble academically, however the thing he lacks most is social awareness. So ive decided to make a scenario game of social interactions. It will be very personal to him using experiences he's had and I ve witnessed and had to deal with. It will be a what would you do? and what should you do? game. I hope after doing the what would you do? part we can reflect and then play the same game but with a what should you do question. I have run this past him and his father and they both really like the idea. Infact the dad asked if he could borrow it! and the child seemed very pleased that someone was making a game specifically for him. Landed!:)

Assignment anguish!

I'm finding it really hard to sort my assignment out. Ive had ideas and then thought na, can't do that. How the guy's and girls figure out something for their kids in a special needs school I don't know, but I find it really hard in my setting with my littlens for something to do. They're in their subjects every lesson and can't be taken out, and it's not my place to teach or even vreate resources to aid their teaching really (maybe if I'd been in the school for some time,some of the teachers wouldn't mind!), they don't struggle academically, infact far from it, it's the social aspect of life they have difficulty with and the only time I can find for them to do stuff with me is at a dinner time which means they must be willling to do it. Which all depends on their mood! So I ve decided to go for a game using maths which atleast I know they enjoy and probably won't mind doing at a luchtime as they enjoy playing games on the computer. I must say it's not the most inspiring idea but its the only one I can think of working. I've started making it, now I  just need to plan it! hey hoe! 

The blank square below is my catchphrase animation. You have to click on it to get it to work.

Animation!

We learnt how to use 2 animate last week. It was really straight forward but was fab to learn. The kids would love it and it could be used to support any subect in a fun way. Firstly we used the simple 2 animate which infant kids could use or like us could use it first to get the idea and then move on to the harder version. We were asked to do a simple animation using ony a few slides at first, I enjoyed this and did a man drinking a pint but accidentally spills it over himself! Unfirtunately when I went to save it dissappeared! I had to do it all over again and then when it did save I went to look for it to put on my blog and it had gone! I was not happy. But we did do another one based on the tv programme catchphrase. This was fun but I didn't get time to put it on my blog so i'll do it tomorrow hopefully. I also added loads of new stuff to my blog too, mainly silly stuff but its a bit of fun. Look forward to tomorrow now.

Back in uni tomorrow! I didnt think id be able to go because of the first aid course im on but fingers crossed we'll finish in time. I ve got a theory and practical exam tomorrow which if I pass will make me a fully fledged first aider! Its been a fab course actually, really interesting and fun. Anyway im glad I can get to uni tomorrow as I need to ask a few things and get some people to follow my blog. Because I had to change my address on the last session before xmas I haven't got any followers and I forgot other people s addresses so I couldn't follow theres and ask them to follow me. Right pain, so I need to sort that out tomorrow and ask a few things about the asignment, like when does it need to be in. In 3 weeks or when our next module begins? I dunno, anyway be nice to  see the girls and catch up, just hope im not wrecked after my busy day. lots of coffee I think!

Back to work!

Well all the christmas fun is over including the snow, which I know caused havoc but I loved it! I hope you all enjoyed and relaxed as much as I did, however, unfortunately its back to the daily grind! Tiring couple of days so far but in a way its nice to get back to normality. So much so I ve starting preparing my activity to do with the kids for the assignment. I'm going to have them use a search engine to find pictures of things they like and don't like which will help them to write a story using Clicker 5. Clicker 5 is a fab programme where children with or without literacy difficulties can create imaginative stories with pictures. The programme also helps children write poems, play memory games, word games, number games but also enables them to make all of these games for themselves. There are alot of possibilities with clicker 5 in regards to literacy and numeracy and has endless resources as it's also online. It s really interactive because it speaks to the child, repeating words and sentences they've created.  However my favourite thing about it is how it will help set up a story for those who lack confidence with their imagination. For  example at halloween it'll give you an option to start a sentence with "Once there lived an old woman" or "Once there lived a witch" It starts children off and guides them from beginning to end brilliantly. Infact theres so much to it I'm not sure how to use it properly myself yet. So there we go my head is back in the game. Roll on February!