Digital Photography/Camera + Special Needs Student

During my last student teaching block, I was introduced to a special needs student (not in my class) who turned out to be a visual learner. It was determined by her home room teacher, EA and family members that it was very important for this student to learn central locations (house, school, church, hospital etc.) in the event of her being lost. After a number of different teaching approaches were made, the EA came up with an idea to incorporate photography. She took pictures of the above locations and then pasted them onto some Bristle Board. She then cut out the names of the locations and applied Velcro on the other end. She basically created this interactive game for the student, and it worked quite successfully.

I thought this was a fantastic idea, and it was the first thing that popped into my mind when reading about this week’s topic. For me what was really surprising was the fact that the EA did not have a digital camera and had to wait a number of days to get her film developed. If she had access to a digital camera, it would have saved her time and money.

Also, as some of the earlier posts in this discussion implied earlier, if this student was also allowed to use the digital camera to take her own pictures of these locations we might have seen a stronger comprehension level acquired for her.