|
| Refining Teaching Through Technology: Using PowerPoint to Create Highly Individualized Behavior Analytic Teaching Programs for Children With Autism |
| Friday, May 28, 2010 |
| 10:00 AM–5:00 PM |
| Bonham A (Grand Hyatt) |
| Area: AUT; Domain: Applied Behavior Analysis |
| CE Instructor: Becky Penrod, Ph.D. |
| JESSICA SLATON (Nashoba Learning Group) |
| Description: Children with autism often require very specialized prompting, prompt fading, error correction, or stimulus arrangement to effectively learn new skills. For some children with autism, the level of precision necessary in executing these teaching strategies is so great that it cannot reliably be performed without technology. Examples of such precision include the difference between a 1 second and 1.5 second time delay prompt, presenting a verbal SD with the same volume and intonation every trial, or exaggerating the size of a stimulus by exactly 5% vs. 8%. Children with autism who require that prompts be broken down so minutely and faded so gradually can benefit from computerized teaching programs that are capable of providing such precision. There are many educational software programs available on the market, but they lack the individualization necessary and may in fact reinforce incorrect answers by providing auditory or visual stimuli after each answer. Using Microsoft PowerPoint is an excellent (and free) alternative way to create highly individualized and precise teaching programs for the most challenged learners with autism. Examples of skills successfully taught using individualized PowerPoint programs are object identification, sight words, phonics, answering social questions, and addition and subtraction on a number line. |
| Learning Objectives: Participants will be able to do the following:
1. Participants will be able to use PowerPoint to create behavior analytic teaching programs using time delay prompts; stimulus superimposition and fading; echoic prompts; prompts that are faded within session; and within-stimulus prompts that manipulate size, position, color, and movement.
2. Participants will be able to use PowerPoint to insert, modify, and animate pictures, shapes, and text boxes, including making stimuli appear and disappear or change position contingent upon clicking a target stimulus or in sequence with other stimuli.
3. Participants will be able to use PowerPoint to incorporate individualized multi-media reinforcement (music, videos) into teaching programs, on both fixed and variable ratio schedules.
4. Participants will be able to use PowerPoint to create multiple types of error correction procedures within teaching programs.
5. Participants will be able to use PowerPoint to record and deliver verbal SDs.
6. Participants will be able to describe several strategies for generalizing skills learned via PowerPoint to more naturalistic and functional settings. |
| Activities: Participants will review teaching programs created with PowerPoint to become familiar with the capabilities of the program, and complete hands-on activities with PowerPoint. It is very strongly recommended that participants bring their laptop with them to complete hands-on activities. Laptops should have a working version of Microsoft PowerPoint. Colleagues attending the workshop together may share a laptop if they desire. Participants who do not bring laptops will still benefit from observing the instructor model the steps of these activities, and can complete hands-on activities by mapping out their slides on paper. Participants will be led through a series of task-analyzed activities using individual components of PowerPoint to create behavior analytic teaching programs including, but not limited to, inserting and modifying stimuli; recording and using auditory stimuli; animating stimuli; making stimuli appear and disappear; specifying when stimuli animate (automatically, on a time delay, or contingent upon clicking other stimuli); and inserting and using multi-media reinforcement. Detailed written instructions will be provided for all participants, including task analyses for some of the more complex programming tasks. There will be time for participants to begin designing their own individualized PowerPoint teaching programs, with guidance from the instructor. The instructor will be using PowerPoint with Windows Vista, but is familiar with earlier versions. |
| Audience: This workshop is appropriate for behavior analysts who are responsible for designing individualized teaching programs for children with autism and who have easy access to PowerPoint in their work setting, but may not be familiar with using it. An in-depth knowledge of behavior analytic teaching strategies is necessary. No experience with PowerPoint is necessary, though a basic understanding of how to use a computer is assumed (e.g., browsing the internet, using word processing software, cutting and pasting, making selections from drop-down menus, etc.) The strategies covered in this workshop are applicable to many types of learners, but are particularly relevant to learners who demonstrate slow progress and require a very high level of consistency and precision in their teaching. |
| Content Area: Practice |
| Instruction Level: Intermediate |