Summer Institute

       Today we had our Summer Institute.  In the Keynote Address we were called to use creativity to find solutions to those hard to answer questions that face our society today, such as poverty. Poverty deeply affects Nova Scotian students and communities.  Schools are shutting down, unemployment rates are too high, and poverty is far too prevalent.  As teachers, we must continue to search for new and innovative ways to educate our students in hopes that students can be gainfully employed, and that they may figure out ways to create new job opportunities to help to minimize poverty to a great degree.
      Technology is the medium that we must use to achieve this goal.  We must teach technology so that students will be prepared for the increasingly technological world in which we live. The use of computers has become such a large part of everyday life that we don`t even notice how incredibly dependant we are on them.  It doesn`t appear that computers will be going away any time soon, so we should embrace technology. 
       The types of incredible Apps that are available now can help to solve a lot of the problems in schools today.  Some apps. allow for text to speech translations that can help students who are blind, others involve speech to text, which can help students who are deaf, or who need a scribe for a variety of other reasons.  There are apps to allow students to access computers in a number of other ways.  For example, I think of the student who uses his tongue to access his computer screen, because he doesn`t have use of his arms or legs.  These things help students to be involved in school.  It was not long ago that this student would not have had access to public schools in a meaningful way.
         This brings me to the part of the morning in which Martin Morrison and Micheal Corbett. They spoke about the self identity and race.  I think that the Inclusive Education  program is designed to teach teachers to look for ways to make classrooms more accessible to everyone.  So, I think that this section of the morning spoke to us about the purpose behind the Assistive Technology course.
          Finally, the Summer Institute ended with a section about Counselling students.  We must collaborate with Guidance Counsellors and School Psychologists, so it is important to know what they are faced with on a daily basis.  It is also important to have strong relationships with students, which is an essential component in the Counselling process.  The stronger our relationship is with our students the more we can hope to engage them and assess them.  However, the afternoon was less relevant to this course in my opinion.