Webinars

Keep up with the latest Ed trends with a webinar, and bring your team!

Our webinars address timely and relevant topics like new education standards, high-stakes testing, closing the achievement gap, and how to choose the right accommodations for your students.

Live Webinars

Our live webinars are always free to attend—you just need to register!

More (new!) webinars are coming your way in 2020!
Co:Writer Test Mode: Using Writing Accommodations on the Assessment

Your state assessment is only months away, and time is running out to put your accommodations plan in place. 

Join this webinar with Kevin Johnston, VP Research & Development at Don Johnston Incorporated, for a deep dive into how Co:Writer Test Mode can help you comply with your state’s writing accommodation requirements. Co:Writer builds in settings that align with over 50 different state assessments*—automatically adjusting settings based on documented state requirements and then locking those settings during the assessment. Kevin will cover Set/Up/Management, Settings, Installation, Test Security, and getting data for Proof of Accommodation Use.

You’ll also get a sneak peek into Don Johnston’s latest collaboration with Pearson to embed accommodations directly into the TestNav-based assessment—coming in fall 2020.

* States do not endorse specific products. Compliance with state regulations was based on published requirements. Always check with your local regulations and authorities to verify accommodation guidelines.


About the Presenter:

Kevin Johnston, VP Research & Development at Don Johnston Incorporated. Kevin has expertise in creating industry collaborations with a variety of leading educational vendors. Kevin works with educators to increase their knowledge of critical literacy technology. His goal is to help school systems choose, integrate and use reading and writing technology to improve student performance.


February 19, 2020
12:00 pm to 1:00 pm


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On-Demand Webinars

Our on-demand webinars are always free to view—you just need to sign up!

How to Use Speech Recognition as AT for Writing

Speech Recognition technology has become a ubiquitous part of life—we can ask Google to turn on the lights, dictate text messages to Siri, and even order a pizza through Alexa.

 

But how can we best use this technology as an accommodation for our students throughout the school year and during testing?

Daniel Cochrane and Kelly Key share the path to using speech recognition as AT for writing through a systematic process:

  1. Consider It as part of the assistive technology consideration
  2. Try It out with students using a systematic process
  3. Assess It with data to show if it works
  4. Implement It to maximize student success
Screenshot of Speech Recognition as AT for Writing

The webinar includes Daniel Cochrane and Kelly Key’s popular *and recently updated* guide to using speech recognition for writing


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The Path to UDL: Why UDL is Tough to Implement — and Five Necessary Components to *Really* Make UDL Happen

UDL is simple: take technology, media, goal-setting, and some new findings on how the brain works and each student would get the right supports to be successful as can be. It sounds like a dream…until you wake up and realize:

  1. Teachers don’t want one more thing to do.
  2. It’s a “special ed” initiative, so it’s out of the “general ed” sandbox.
  3. You work with individual students, but UDL requires “system change.” You’re out of your league!

Okay, so where does that leave your UDL initiative, and where do you go from here? Join AT practitioner, thought leader, writer, and UDL evangelist, Hillary Goldthwait-Fowles, PhD., as she goes under the surface of UDL to give five components necessary to make it *really* happen.


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WE TEACH Readtopia How to Be the Teacher You Always Wanted to Be

Think back to when you made the decision to teach special education…what inspired you to make that decision?

Was it to create all of your own materials (because the district didn’t have anything appropriate for your students)?
Was it the feeling of never having enough time?

Was it all of the IEP paperwork?

No. No. No!

The realities can be far apart from the real heart of teaching special education. You became a teacher because you saw that the students needed you, and you wanted to make a difference.

How can we get back to that?

In this on-demand webinar, special educator, Courtney Moore, and education expert, Caroline Musselwhite, share how Readtopia gives them the teaching resources to do their best work—helping them get back to what they love about teaching:

  1. Teaching with engaging and age-respectful content aligned to the curriculum
  2. Facilitating positive social-emotional learning
  3. Making teaching come alive with Thematic Units, video, leveled graphic novels, and authentic texts
  4. Really differentiating to meet the unique needs of each student

They’ll also share how the teaching resources helped them reclaimed the time and freedom they needed to feel on top of their game.


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Specially Designed Instruction for Writing—5 Inclusive Ways to Help the Struggling Writer

As practitioners and administrators, we see students with writing needs that are very easy to spot:

  1. Poor fine motor skills
  2. Messy or slow handwriting
  3. Lack of attention to tasks
  4. Poor spelling
  5. Difficulty getting ideas down on paper

What to do about it is another story, but the good news is that SDI provides a direct path to help students with writing in a very inclusive way.

In this webinar, Kelly Fonner will share a 5-Minute Screening Tool to identify the writing accommodation needs of each student, and then how to accommodate writing to ensure access to the curriculum using:

  1. Word Prediction… to assist in getting ideas down in text
  2. Speech-to-Text…  as another means of writing
  3. Vocabulary… build academic and topic-specific vocabulary
  4. Translation… for your language learners
  5. Data Walks… to build student confidence


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AT Today: The Role of Accommodations in Specially Designed Instruction

With the proliferation of technology available in our classrooms today we don’t need accommodations anymore, right? Maybe you work in a 1:1 Chromebook environment so there is no need to document AT on an IEP, right? Or your school practices Universal Design for Learning, so there is no need for customized solutions for students, right?

The short answer is: NO, NO and NO!

In this on demand webinar, Mike Marotta explores the current landscape of technology in the classroom—looking at the role accommodations play in effective, inclusive instruction giving every student an opportunity to be successful.

He dives into:

  1. Tools built into Google, and tools that go beyond Google
  2. Ways to identify the right individualized reading accommodations
  3. How to support students with reading and writing tasks
  4. Tools that make instruction more effective for educators


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Four Must-Have Foundations for Your Special Education Writing Curriculum

The alternate assessment has brought writing into focus. The challenge is knowing how to teach writing for students with complex needs.  As a former Special Education Administrator, my experience has taught me that there are four foundational elements which are non-negotiable when teaching writing in special education. View this on demand webinar to see how to infuse the four elements of Confidence, Measurement, Instruction, and Engagement into your instructional program.


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Hamilton Meets The Digital Learner: Who Reads, Who Writes, Who Tells Their Story?

During the American Revolution, Founding Father Alexander Hamilton wanted to have a lasting impact on the world around him—a legacy to leave his children and grandchildren. His ability to read and write helped lift him from poverty to making a mark on history. Now in the current technological revolution, we can open this story for many more through accessible technologies. Let your legacy be that of connecting students to their full potential with the right supports. Amy D’Aquila will demonstrate visual, auditory, and learning supports that help bridge the gap for struggling readers and writers—using examples from the smash hit musical, Hamilton.


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Quizbot—Your On-Ramp to Quizzes in Google Forms

There are many benefits to using Google Forms for worksheets and quizzes including accessibility, instant grading, and integration with Google Classroom. 

With all of these benefits, why aren’t more educators using it? The reality is that it can be tough to get started. Quizbot expedites the process to create accessible quizzes in Google Forms. One click from any webpage or PDF is all it takes to generate a quiz with answers. From there, educators only need to edit questions and add additional questions for higher-order thinking. See Quizbot in action in this on-demand webinar.


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A Principal’s Guide to Choosing and Implementing a Special Education Curriculum

What really matters when choosing and implementing a special education curriculum? Special Education Principal, Barbara Tremblay will share how her school chose and implemented the Readtopia® integrated literacy curriculum. She will discuss the turn around she witnessed in teachers and students when her school implemented age-respectful, truly leveled materials that helped guide teachers to do their best work with their students and make real growth.


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