Today was the first day with the TAP·it®. I had the board set up with a few websites open so that when we did morning circle those websites would be accessible without having to open them and wait.
When we brought in the first student who is ambulatory, we let her come into the room and find a leisure activity. She immediately noticed the new “toy” in the room. She sat in the chair next to the board and before I knew it she had some how managed to open up the language options in the internet. She can not read another language so I have no idea what her intentions were.
Since I knew I had her attention I quickly found a program that had an interactive component to it with out needed to have “targets” hit. I chose either a chooseit or jigsaw, I can not remember which it was at this point. After a few moments, she became disinterested (it had looped through 2 times). She then got up and walked over to the back table in our room and began looking through a magazine. Anther student knee walked over to the board and hit it with his fist. It was nice to not worry that the calibration would be knocked off. He sat in a chair for 20 minutes and did the jigsaw maker program. This was the first day back after a two week vacation. His trunk control while sitting was fantastic. He was engaged and happy.
Once students had their personal business taken care of we proceeded to morning circle where we were able to use the board for the weather report as well as for listening to a song and voting on if we liked it or not.
We also were able to complete the checkpoints from the N2Y, Unique Learning System curriculum. When the student answered, after I had presented the question, I assumed that the students touch was intentional. There was one point where the student was having a bit of a fit over having to do work, she slapped at the board and activated a button that was not an icon choice. I would have to say that it would be nice for the board to have a “touch kill” switch. It’s great to know that the board can handle a student hitting the board in frustration. Behaviorally, if the students goal is to just hit, hit, hit to finish the activity then it would be nice to have a way to allow the student to have the fit without the benefit of the activity being over.
Overall… I feel that this new tool will offer me the opportunity to provide the students with the opportunities to learn.
