Screencasting in Special Education

Throughout this course I feel as though I have learned and implemented many valuable forms of technology into my classroom. However I feel as though the most valuable form of technology I have implemented with success is a screencast. I am currently a teacher of students that are in a Functional Mental Disabled unit. I have 12 students that all have low IQ's but all are learning at different levels. I struggle to ever miss a day of work, I could be so sick and I will come in because there are not may substitutes that are able to teach my students. Now when I say "able to teach my students" it doesn't mean that they lack the want to teach them, however my students require intense structure throughout every moment of their day. Many of them also learn things through memorization and repetitive practice. If I show them how to complete an addition problem one way, and a sub shows them how to complete an addition problem another, it can sometimes throw them completely off and the skill of addition is a loss for those moments. I constantly am looking for ways to make EVERYONE in my classroom's life easier…in comes a screencast. I have discovered that skills I want to be taught in a particular way can even be completed when I am not in the classroom. I can do these by using a screencast. It has been extremely affective for my students, but it has also been extremely affective for the staff that work in my classroom. Everyone knows exactly how things are to be done throughout a problem, because they have a screencast that provides an algorithm to follow. I will absolutely continue to implement this into my classroom through the rest of my time teacher. I see that it can help my students in the classroom and I am excited to implement in through our classroom blog in order to be a support for parents at home as well.