Assistive Technology Supports for Students who Struggle with Attention with Cassie Frost
laptop computer spins onto the screen opens and displays atp education program webinar series closes and then spins off the screen hello and welcome to today's video on assistive technology supports for students who struggle with attention this is a pretty huge topic because we all know of students who really can struggle when they need to attend to what's going on in the classroom this can be one of the biggest struggles in the classroom especially because attention then flows into struggles with memory and we have students who aren't learning the content that we need them to every day hi if you've not met me before my name is cassie frost i'm an assistive technology specialist and behavior specialist i also like to add problem solver and collector of things that may come in handy and i was always a believer that everyone can learn my twitter handle is here on this page and i will share my contact information including my email on the last slide so let's get into attention attention is unique and one of the well and the only area of executive function that is hierarchical i love that word so what does that mean that means that you cannot obtain the next level of attention until you have the one prior to it so for example you cannot have sustained attention if you don't first have focused attention so let's look at these the very first area of attention is focused attention this is being able to focus on one stimuli most often we will have students who will develop this as an infant this is typically when a baby is looking at a parent who or a toy that's being waived in front of them and they're focusing on that one thing once that's down a student or a child can then move on to sustained attention this is being able to we'll say vigilance and persistence it also just means how long the student or the child can pay attention to one thing this is often times where we'll talk about toddlers really liking commercials right they really like those short bursts of color and activity longer things don't hold their attention as much this is also why when we work with elementary school students especially like preschool and kindergarten students we don't have tasks that last as long as we expect students to be able to attend to in say the junior high or the high school if a student has sustained attention meaning they can pay attention to one thing for an extended period of time the next level then is selective attention this is that freedom from distractibility meaning if a student is expected to be attending to one thing perhaps reading a book watching a movie playing a video game watching their teacher any one of a number of things that they're not distracted when something else happens so say for example the wind blows through the room the principal opens the classroom door any one of those things as i'm saying that i know you're probably already thinking of one or two students who struggle in this area it's important to hang on to that thought as we keep talking because if a student is struggling with this area of attention they're likely not going to do well with the following ones if you now have focused attention sustained attention you can have selective attention the next step then is alternating attention mental flexibility this is where you have the ability to be doing one thing stop what you're doing switch to something else and come back to it okay so if i'm listening to the teacher then the principal walks in the door i turn i look at him and i can come back again to the teacher so you have the ability to switch between multiple thoughts or multiple activities at one time the final area if all has gone well and we have students getting into junior high and high school we then can be looking at divided attention or what some people will call multitasking some people will say and some studies have shown that you're not truly multitasking or thinking of multiple or attending to multiple things at one time but more that you are alternating between things very rapidly oftentimes we are expecting students to have divided attention by the time they're reaching junior high in high school as we're asking them to do things like watch a video and take notes right listen to the teacher while getting your assignment out we require and request this of our students very very often what's important to remember is as i was talking about sustained and selective attention there are certain students that popped into your mind that maybe struggle in that area if they're already struggling there they're not going to be able to do two things at one time such as listen to you and write in their planner what this means then is then we often have students who aren't writing their assignments in at the end of the day because they can't do both of those things at once so as we're talking about attention i just want you to kind of keep in mind what it is you're asking your students to do in class and if it's possible to kind of slow things down or break things up so you're not asking students to multi-task or do two things at one time if you know you have students in your classroom who are struggling with attention now let's take a little bit of time and just like in previous videos we are going to break it down and go into some chrome tools some ios tools some low-tech tools things that are going to work as assistive technology to help students who struggle with attention the very first thing that we are going to look at are chrome extensions so let me jump out of this slide deck for just a moment the first extension that i like for attention is called move it this is an extension that encourages movement breaks we know that students who struggle with attention especially that sustained attention that can't attend for long periods of time movement breaks in between activities can really help reset the brain and be ready to attend again for another period of time move it is a chrome extension that looks like this when you click on it it's going to come up with a red box that's going to ask you how often you want to have exercise or move it movement breaks i have this one set currently for 10 minutes if i want it to be currently active meaning i want to actually have it pop up i'm going to leave it enabled for the purpose of this video i'm going to shorten that down to five minutes so in five minutes you will see it pop up and i can show you what that screen looks like the second extension is called noisely we know that students who struggle with attention sometimes will actually say they may have an excess of attention and that's when they're kind of back on here we go that freedom from distractibility piece meaning they're paying attention to so many things at one time that it's really hard for them to pay attention just to you or to the lesson sometimes for those students having the availability of kind of utilizing one of their senses so like a fidget with their hands or something that they can listen to will help them block out or use up some of that attention so they can pay attention to what you need them to so noisely is a chrome extension let's see if i can find it in here it appears that it is gone did i accidentally turn it off nope it's there okay well let me go find noisely i have too many extensions here we go so nicely when you click on it allows you to schedule or pick out different types of background noises so instead of a student maybe listening to music they instead can pick out different background sounds so for example they can click on productivity and this is the noise that we'll be playing in the background now recording on the video sometimes audio doesn't come through if you can't hear it just kind of know that it is playing in the background you can turn it up you can turn it down there are paid versions that do have more features most dudes are pretty happy with the availability that is here if you want more information or to be able to customize it a little bit further if you do go to the noisly website you there can make more kind of fine tuning of the different background noises the last chrome extension specifically that i think works really well for attention is called momentum momentum is a chrome extension that you install but you don't normally get to it from here the way that momentum works is it overrides your defaults for new tabs so if i am going to create a new tab momentum will take over and instead of the standard background tab that comes up this is the one that i will get this allows me to kind of have a moment of focus okay so again sort of that attention thing it's going to give me the time it's going to tell me the time of day it's going to ask me what my focus is it's going to kind of give me a quote it has a place up here where i can keep track of links that i may want to access and it also is going to give me kind of my place to keep my to-do list now this is customizable you can go ahead into settings and you can change what you want available to you so you can kind of decide that maybe you don't want the quote and instead you want a mantra or you can pick certain quotes that you want to see those are all ways that you can customize momentum for attention this is really great because of being on a computer sometimes when you create a new tab or you're out and about online there's a lot of distractions right computers are great but they are full of distractions for students who struggle with attention momentum is a solid way every time a new tab is open to kind of bring students focus back to what it is they need to be doing and kind of center them back into the task at hand just like with chrome ios also has some really awesome tools one of the first amazing tools on ios and i'm just going to move my screen here real quick my screen is not sharing give me just a second to bring that up there we go okay so one of the first tools that i really like for ios is guided access guided access is simply a setting that's available in accessibility that allows you to go ahead and customize the availability of things in your ipad what that means is that you can set passcodes you can set time limits this is really great for students who struggle with the amount of time that they have on an ipad or they're getting distracted by other things on it you simply can go ahead and set limits to what the student can do on the ipad and this is built in the next things that i like about an ipad is they are really good for self-regulation for calming things when it comes to attention we know if a student's kind of feeling disregulated and all over the place attention is one of the first things that will struggle or cause an issue so two apps that i want to show today the very first one is called mindful powers mindful powers is a mindfulness app that allows students to play with this little guy on the screen that's going to be called a fidgety gibbet i can never pronounce it really well but as you can see he's not super happy at the moment i can set focus time for periods of time that i need to stay focused without touching the screen i can pick mindful play and i also can touch my little fidgety jibbet here so what's really great about him i'm gonna go into mindful play and here then there's a whole story of what it is uh what is mindfulness how does it work so it is really nice to be able to go in and kind of interact with this little guy typically what you're going to be able to do is it's going to ask you to smooth him out by moving your finger back and forth on him and he will get super happy and calm the more you smooth him out but what that does mean is you have to move your finger very slowly on the screen to make that happen a little less animated there is an app called pause the way that this app works is it asks you to put your finger on the dot on the screen and then it asks you to follow the dot with your finger if you go too fast it's going to tell you that you do not have your finger in the right spot and it's also not going to make the dot any bigger the more you keep your finger inside the circle the bigger that dot is going to get and it's going to kind of grow across the entire screen if you move too quickly instead that dot is going to shrink so it really motivates students to kind of slow down and focus again this then helps with that attention piece because students who are not as emotionally escalated definitely have proven abilities to be able to attend for longer periods of time as long as we're talking about self-regulation the other thing that i want to show you is a tool called the pip okay and i'm going to show you here on this little uh corner on the screen here okay let me get that in front this little thing is called the pip if you're looking for it you will need to actually search the pip okay just because otherwise it thinks it's picture in picture this little thing is about a hundred and fifty dollars but what it works as is a biofeedback reader so these little um circles on each side you hold between your fingers and it reads the electrical impulses in your body and in your system to talk then about and read how you are feeling stress wise so these apps that are looking on the screen right now go along with the pip once you've purchased the pip the apps are free so the one purchase is the pip but again if a student is feeling dysregulated they're very emotionally escalated we know that attention is going to struggle the pip is something to really help students both visualize their stress levels but also learn how to manage them so let's look at one of these extender extensions i'm sorry ipad apps we're going to start with a pip stress tracker i'm going to click new session i can pick the length of time that i want the session to go and push start you are going to see here that as this line goes up so more red means that i am more escalated obviously i'm on camera and being recorded so that kind of gets me all excited so you see it going up however if i take some deep breaths calm down just a little bit you're going to see that the red will decrease so this is a really easy way for a student to gauge how they are feeling and to get themselves in a more calm place where they are able to attend more i'm going to jump out of this app real quick because i also want to then show you a couple of the other apps on here there's one called the loom that allows students to do things like see a winter scene and as they calm spring comes so that's always a student favorite if i pick this one and continue you're going to see it is a winter scene on the bottom left it's going to show where i'm at obviously green is calm yellow is kind of holding steady red is not so calm the more green events that you have the faster the snow will melt water will start flowing leaves will come onto the tree and students will you know kind of be able to calm themselves as they are going there are a few other ones on here it's important to know that clarity will actually walk students through the process of calming down or self-regulation and um relax and race actually races dragons by calming down this was one of my favorite things as an educator we actually have students racing to calm down i think that's just one of the most unique things ever so while i was doing that we did have another screen pop up here saying move it this is that move it extension in work it's been five minutes since it started so it's now going to pop up and remind me that i need to move it's going to ask me to run on the spot for 15 seconds it may also ask you to do jumping jacks or other things still usually only about a 15 minutes 15 seconds excuse me movement break and when you're finished you can click done it will go away and that five minutes restarts so these are all of our high tech assistive technology tools for emotional and regulation and attention in the area of executive functioning but before we end this uh short video i also want to look at some low-tech things when it comes to attention oftentimes outside of things like fidgets and audio most of the adaptations to support are environmental this means that in your classroom try to limit unnecessary visuals while we all love posters and colorful things on the wall for a student who struggles with attention is just more things that they need to try to block out if you do want bright colors and posters and extra things like that try to put them off to the sides or behind students so that when they are looking at the screen or the board they have just that to attend to provide as many video and visual or audio cues as possible so when a student's going to need to attend you are going to make an announcement either give an audio cue such as okay guys or a bell something that they know that now they need to attend to this next thing or a visual cue like a certain color that you put up on the screen etc also having assigned locations for things so if a student maybe needs to do some quiet reading having a location that they always go to do that if they're going to be working with a group project always having that in the same location it really helps students who struggle especially in that area of multitasking or trying to switch back and forth if they know what's going to be happening in each location so if you have any questions as always reach out to me at my email or twitter handle on the screen and again remember that if a student is struggling with a previous version of attention they are not going to be able to move on to those further levels so i challenge you to look at your systems in your classroom look at your lessons and try to see how often you are asking students to do things like multitask or swi quickly switch between things and eliminate those if at all possible when you have students who struggle with attention i hope you join us for future videos and i hope you have enjoyed this one thank you for watching for more information on the atp education program please visit our website at atp.nebraska.gov forward slash education or email us at atp.education nebraska.gov
2022-01-10 03:02
