Last year, stimulus money was being spread across the country to the nation’s school districts, and in preparation for the arrival of those stimulus funds, the local school district encouraged campuses to write small grants on ways the money could be used to help children learn better.

National Public Radio had done a story on how playing outside not only increased social interaction, but also improved test scores.

A local special education teacher who knew that playgrounds were important developmentally for all children, not just special needs children, decided to write a mini grant, addressing the children’s gross motor skills needs.

Finally, after years of asking for a new playground, the teacher got the funds for a slide, a swing set and a jungle gym.

As expected, the children loved the playground. The surprise for the teacher was how the new playground equipment and the open space changed the way the children interacted.

She noticed that, over time, some students who usually played alone slowly started to interact with the others. This was especially true on the jungle gym and slide.

Interactive play led to "new" games that the children created themselves.

The teacher decided to see what would happen if she filmed the children as they played outside. One child in particular – the most aggressive in the classroom – seemed to benefit a great deal from being filmed by the Flip video system. "Ricky" wanted to be

Using the Flip camera had an added and unexpected benefit. A new piece of equipment from the stimulus money had been purchased for several special education units in the district. Called a "Smart Board," it allowed children to directly interact with a huge movie screen. A child could write on the board with colored pens, and with a "magic" eraser could take away whatever was written on the screen.

The Flip video was easily downloaded onto a Hatch computer, which would project the children’s images onto the Smart Board. The students became very excited watching videos of themselves talking, running and playing on the playground.

The Smart Board also allowed the children to pause the videos. They could interact with the screen by "circling" good behavior and "crossing out" bad behavior.

The screen became so popular that the children began to "draw" faces on themselves and "write" their names on the screen.

After a while, the teacher noticed that Ricky always chose the Smart Board with Flip videos for his choice time. He would watch certain videos over and over, and had one particular video he liked to watch again and again: It showed him playing a game nicely.

That video visually illustrated the basic behaviors of being a good sport. There was a second video of a child not playing nicely. Even though there was a film of Ricky not being a good sport, he usually preferred to watch a different child not following the rules of good behavior.

Gradually, Ricky’s behavior started to change. He began, literally, to repeat the exact words he heard on the Flip video. He would say phrases like, "Be a good sport, everyone. Play nicely, guys. It is OK to lose. Good game, everyone."

Losing, from time to time, remained a problem for Ricky. Then the teacher would see him back at the Smart Board, turning on the Flip videos.

At first, it drove staff crazy to hear the same Flip video, dozens of times a day. After a while, though, they realized how it positively it was influencing Ricky in playing with his peers.

Then Ricky began to watch videos of the children playing outside. He wanted to play with the others. Most of the children backed away from him, but slowly, Ricky began to imitate the good play of some of the older boys. Little, by little, the boys began to accept Ricky as he tried not to "blow up" when losing a race or not being first on the slide.

The changes in behavior and play did not occur overnight, though, nor even in a matter of weeks. Ricky has taken several years to learn how to behave and to communicate his feelings better.

Technology is a wonderful tool to help children learn not only educational information. It also helps teach them how to play, to communicate and to behave better. Role-playing has long been used to make children understand what is expected of them, and the Smart Board is an incredible visual tool that is changing the way we teach.

Imagine seeing yourself and your peers at play on the Smart Board. You can see when the others move away from you when your play is too aggressive, or when you are sulking because you lost.

And the children can literally highlight how to help one another with this visual tool. Thanks to new technologies, children are discovering how to interact appropriately during play and school times.

Pamela Gross Downing, a special education teacher, can be contacted at downpamg@aol.com.

SOURCE: The Brownsville Herald

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