Discovery Learning

This post will take the form of a short story. When I taught in a Special Ed. withdrawl room a few years ago, I had a student who was just identified as having a Learning Disability. In this identification, he was granted Assistive Technology to help him overcome some of his learning difficulties.

This student had previously been skipping school, avoiding homework tasks, and really causing many problems at home. When he received his AT equipment, his educational experience changed dramatically. He became a responsible independent learner. He matured, and was willing to attend school regularly.

One day he came to the Special Ed. room to see me during his regular time. He brought his laptop and we started with his work as per usual. He stopped the lesson and said “Miss, I have to show you something.” I allowed him to carry on. He opened the program Kurzweil 3000, and proceeded to show me how he had figured out how Dragon Naturally Speaking could be integrated in Kurzweil using the voice function. I was so proud of him as his teacher, and impressed at his tenacity. I had known him previously and he had had such a difficult time in the classroom. To see his development and willingness to learn via this mode was an incredible change from what had been seen previously. This student had created his own ‘discovery learning’ opportunity using Assistive Technology. One element that contributed to his ‘discovery learning’ was the willingness and openness on the part of his teacher to allow him to think outside the box. We both knew at that point that his educational future was a lot brighter than we had originally anticipated.