Does going on a field trip without even leaving your classroom, having to deal with permission slips, and all the logistical nightmares sound like a dream come true? This can be the new way of world travel for you and your students! Students who are deaf or hard of hearing (DHH) are often visual learners. Incorporating virtual field trips during instruction enables students who are DHH to have improved access on an entirely different level. Virtual field trips allow students to use visual cues to connect to their prior knowledge, scaffold language development, and explore new concepts while allowing a deeper and more meaningful connection to the new material. When teaching about specific places, in order to help them comprehend the full extent of the information, why not take them on a visual adventure?

Fortunately, we live in an age of virtual technology that places the world at our fingertips. There are many places around the world we may have never even dreamed of going ourselves, can now be visited with just a click of a button. In order to create an itinerary, teachers still need to spend time searching for content and weeding through a plethora of websites. But who has that kind of spare time nowadays? RMTC-D/HH has taken some of this planning time off your plate with this Interactive Virtual Field Trips publication listing a variety of resources such as websites, apps, and web tools to be able to take your students’ imaginations and comprehension to new levels. Enjoy your adventures and expeditions! We would love to hear from you...send postcards from your class. Bon Voyage!

Providing instruction in ASL summaries of books gives accessible educational materials to students who communicate in this modality . RMTC-D/HH, in a collaborative effort with the Access Project , Technology and Learning Connections , and June Ann Lefors and Randi Mitchell from the Florida School for the Deaf and Blind, produced the ASL translations of adapted texts found on the Access Project’s Weebly. Though based on adapted texts, these videos are also excellent tools for summarizations in ASL. Click here to access the playlists of videos that are broken down by chapter or article for Esperanza Rising (elementary literature), Taking Flight (a series of middle school nonfiction articles), and The Pearl (high school literature). See video below for an excerpt from Taking Flight ! Click here for the adapted text and resources related to these texts, provided by the Access Project.

Check out the RMTC-D/HH 2019-2020 Calendar for more upcoming events!

RMTC-D/HH provides Tech Notes as a free resource to teachers, professionals, and parents around the state in order to pass along potentially useful information and expand the knowledge and opportunities available to educators and families of children who have hearing loss. This email was funded by the Florida Department of Education Bureau of Exceptional Education and Student Services through federal assistance under the Individuals with Disabilities Act (IDEA), Part B funds. The information included does not reflect any specific endorsement by any parties involved.