Gifted School Activities With DropTalk, Parent-Teacher Notebook, and SmileNote for Students With Disabilities

Abstract

Three programs, DropTalk, Parent-Teacher Notebook, and SmileNote, were developed by teachers at schools for special needs education to help students with various disabilities, in collaboration with businesses supportive of students with disabilities. DropTalk was developed to help students with nonverbal communication by using Pictogram and text overlaid with voice/sound. A digital-based Parent-Teacher Notebook was developed to share the valuable data on each student between their home and school. The shared data are effectively used to build up individual support plans. SmileNote was developed to help students with nonverbal communication disabilities present their wills, hopes, and desires to the classmates and others. In this chapter, the aims and valuable functions in three software applications are described in detail, and self-made contents created with the software and gifted school activities conducted at several schools for special needs education are depicted.