29: Digital Self-Advocacy Journals
Here’s how I do one of my favorite long term self-advocacy activities!
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transcript episode 29: digital self-advocacy journals
Hello and welcome to the TOD POD, a podcast to support Itinerant Teachers of the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, SLPs, and other Deaf Education Professionals. I'm Deanna Barlow from Listening Fun and today we're talking about a long term project that I love to do with my students which is Digital Self-Advocacy Journals. I'm talking about this now because I think it would be a great thing to start in January when we get back from winter break, if you don't do something like this already. And then you could use it for the rest of the year and it's a good way to review what you've done so far but also be kind of set up for the second half of the year.
Basically what I do is I create a Google slides presentation and use it as a digital journal of sorts to keep track of all the self advocacy topics and vocabulary we talk about throughout the year. I made a free template that you can use to get started with your students I'll put it in the show notes. But it's really great to customize it with the students so they feel ownership over this project. I let my students change out the fonts, they can do different fonts on every page if they want to I don't care, let them change the background color, add crazy gradients, add pictures. It's kind of more like a digital scrapbook than a beautiful finished project. And it's in Google Slides but it's not meant to be presented. It's just an easy way to add new information all year and keep it organized like in one file.
So sometimes I do an activity like directly in Google slides. Let's say I want them to know all the parts of their cochlear implant for example. I can take a picture of their implant and put it in the slide. A lot of Chromebooks have a built in camera you just kind of angle it to take the picture doesn't have to be perfect. And then we add text boxes right on top of the picture to label the parts. And then maybe I will import a picture of the internal component from the internet because obviously I can't take a picture of that but I still want them to understand what those parts are and what they do. So now on this slide we have a bunch of great information about their CI.
And then during my next session maybe I have a different activity or different goal, but we can read through all the slides we've created so far and review everything we've learned so far. I can see if they remember some of the parts, maybe they need more practice I can copy and paste that slide delete all the words and have them label it again in a different color or a different font. Maybe we just move on to our activity but over the course of the year we read over this slide so many times that the vocabulary sticks and they learn it, without me having to come up with like 10 different activities for this target goal. The repetition of seeing it every week is enough. And it's really easy to scaffold because let's just say I wanted them to practice it. Maybe I just move all the text boxes around and they have to relabel it instead of retyping everything like it's just really easy to get a lot of repetition without coming up with a new activity every time you want to review a goal.
Another thing I have done is if I have a paper activity, we do the whole paper activity like whatever it is. For example I have a preferential seating activity where there's a bunch of sample classrooms. And the student takes a dry erase marker and circles the best seat for them based on you know the makeup of that class, the sources of background noise, their own hearing loss, whatever. So maybe we do this whole activity with the different classrooms and the activity and really the point is to teach them to think critically about any particular listening situation right? And make the best choice for themselves. So to wrap up this activity I can ask them which example was most similar or most helpful. And we could take a picture of it with the Chromebook, add it to the slide about seating, and then they can write a few sentences about how they pick a seat, what factors they need to look out for. So it's not like I need to take pictures of every single page that we did, just one as an example and then a conclusion of sorts of what they learned from this activity. And then next week when we flip through it before starting whatever it is we're going to do, they can review that seating information and keep it top of mind that way when they have to use this information in real life, they'll remember it because they're going to see it every week basically if I see the student every week.
So you can use it like a wrap up activity or as like an extension activity. So let's say after you finish this and you want to make sure the student is able to generalize it to their classrooms. Maybe one day you go around with them the student and take some pictures of the classrooms. You could do it on the Chromebook, if it has a camera. It doesn't have to be a perfect photo or the student can sketch out their actual classroom and you can talk about it while they're doing that. And you can upload their drawing and then you can label the actual classroom with sources of background noise, best seating for different situations, all that. And then the slide presentation gives you the space to house all these random little activities so that they don't get lost and so that you can review them.
Another thing I do sometimes is have the student rate their understanding of a topic. I put a little rating scale slide in the template I made and you could just copy and paste that slide for each topic. Basically after we review a topic they can tell me how comfortable they feel with that information. It can range from like I don't understand it to I understand it by any more practice to I totally got it to I totally get it and I can do it on my own in the classroom. It kind of depends on the scale. But I think this self-reflection is a really helpful part of self advocacy because they're thinking about their own learning. And are actively engaged in what you're working on together. Depending on the student and the goal you can even screenshot parts of the IEP or copy and paste certain goals, so the student can help evaluate themselves on if they've achieved that goal.
This is something that's really important to me. I want the students to be really clear on what we're working on and why we're doing these activities. I, like as an adult, I hate doing busy work and I hate ambiguity and I imagine that students probably feel similarly. In that the clearer we can be on what we're working on and why the more successful they'll be in generalizing these self advocacy goals and taking ownership of it which is really what self advocacy is at the end of the day. So basically the slides can be used to introduce a topic, create a list of vocabulary, summarize the topic, or be used as the activity itself. It really works for any self-advocacy goal and like I said this is just like a running document. So like the first slide is just like Deanna's Self Advocacy Journal, whatever. Then the second slide might be you know information about my hearing devices and the third slide might be my accommodations and the fourth slide might be seating and then the fifth slide might also be seating and then the sixth slide can be ah they had a random question I thought it was a good question so I typed out the question and we answered it together. Or I observe something in the classroom. So the next time I see them we make a slide and I say oh I notice this let's talk about it and then we make a slide for it. And it's just like a running document of everything we do related to self-advocacy and like I said at the beginning of every session we read through it almost like a book so that way all of that information stays top of mind.
I made a simple template that I'll email out the day this podcast goes live. If you're not on my email list you can join at listeningfun.com/emails and I'll send it to you. It's a pretty simple setup but it has the framework for them to customize. And then has some fun little hearing device like doodle stickers that they can use to decorate their self-advocacy journal if they want. I think it's like an easy way to get started and then I personally, like depends on the situation, I'll either share it with the student or email it with the student. If they have chromebooks I think it's easiest for it to live on their chromebook and then they just take that with our sessions. If they don't then I can have it on my chromebook or my laptop or my ipad whatever it is. So depending on your technology setup you have some options but I do think Google slides is the way to go for these.
So yeah, that's my little project idea. This is one of my favorite things to do. I do it with most of my students. It's really easy to scale up or down, you can make it you know more adult like for a high schooler, more cutesy for a little kid but I think it works really well to organize yourself for the second half of the year and make sure they're actually retaining all the good information that you teach them. So that's that on that.
So I'm kind of liking making these solo episodes a little shorter a little more to the point some like functional ideas. And then having the interviews be more in-depth longer conversations. It kind of feels like a nice balance of like quick info and longer podcasts for the car. You can let me know what you think. November is actually six months of the TOD POD already which is crazy. But I think that this is a nice flow so you let me know if you agree or if you have any feedback for me. You could DM me on Instagram @listeningfun. And thank you so much for listening to today's episode. As always full transcript and links will be at listentotodpod.com and in the show notes below. Have a great week and I'll see you next time. Bye!