It's an exciting time (and a LONG blog!)

I’m very excited!! After not doing a lot of hands on work the past couple of weeks, my internship has “exploded.” I took Thursday off from work at visited a high school in my district, Dutch Fork High School. The low TMD/PMD class is housed there (that stands for Trainable Mentally Disabled and Profoundly Mentally Disabled). They are pretty low, but the things they can do are amazing!! I knew a lot of the kids that were there, since the middle school program for TMD and PMD is housed here at my school (just FYI, in case you are interested: I teach EMD which stands for Educable Mentally Disabled-when they leave middle school, they go to Irmo High School-the TMD/PMD class go to Dutch Fork High School. That is your special education geography lesson for today! :0) ).
The TMD teacher, Ms. Mantsch, went with me so she could observe the students and the class. I had so much fun!! Those kids are amazing (yes, I know I just said that, but I had to say it again). We got to participate in their morning routine, with morning calendar and reading time. One student use a Go Talk + to answer questions during morning calendar. She was quick with it too!! One thing that I always have to remind myself is the response time (the time it takes the students to process the question, find the answer on the communication board) then press the button. But M*, there wasn’t any wait time. She was quick!! One downfall for M* is the fact that she has to have a teacher sit next to her to change the “boards” so she can answer all the questions. I know most of you don’t know what I mean when I say that, but it is time consuming and doesn’t allow the students to be completely independent with the communication device. The device she was using has 9 places per board record a word or a phrase. I think (and the speech pathologist agrees with me) that she could work with a board that is higher, with 32 places.
Some of the other students used a “rocking” plate switch to answer questions on how they feel (happy/sad). They use a ton of signs during calendar time and have a sign of the week. This week, the word is “finished.” If you want to know what the sign looks like, go to http://www.commtechlab.msu.edu/sites/aslweb/browser.htm on internet explorer and look up finished under F. They have a written description as well as a short video clip (you need QuickTime to view) on how to actually do the sign. At the end of calendar time, the students sing a song to remember everyone’s names. They just started a new song, and since the kids are still learning it, they sang both the new and the old song for us, using instruments that are designed for students with ambulatory issues (like a big ocean drum which acts as a shaker).
During this visit, I was also able to work with the speech Pathologist during two of her sessions. M* was our first, and I got to see some assistive tech that I had not seen before. We also worked in the Orthopedic Impaired classroom. These students are generally on grade level but have a lot of difficulties with movement. They have a lot of assistive tech in this classroom, esp. with communication devices. We worked with C* and his Dynamo communication device. C* can answer any questions you ask by either finding the symbol that has been programmed into the device (which is very time consuming) or he can spell the word.
I stayed at Dutch Fork for about 5 hours, and then since we had to stay at school late that night, I went ahead back to school and worked on my final project. I am making a wiki to use as a resource on assistive technology for teachers, students and parents in my district. I worked for three hours Thursday night then again on Friday for 3 ½ hours. If you want to check out what I have done so far, the web address is http://specialeducationtechnology.pbwiki.com
Please feel free to leave comments about how I can improve the site. I need all the help I can get!!