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Category: Special Needs Students

24th
Mar 2012

Educating Special Needs Children At Home

 

Education for Special Needs – The Sacrifice & The Benefits

I have so much respect and admiration for parents that make the committment to educate their child at home, particularly when that child requires Special Education.

Not only does it often mean that the decision for either Mom or Dad to give up working, or possibly even a career, it also means embarking on a course of challenging themselves to take on a role for which they have more than likely never been formally trained.

Homeschooling any child when you have never been trained as a teacher can be daunting enough if you have little or no understanding of what Home Educating entails, but to take on that committment when you know your child has Special Needs – and many parents must surely wonder if their best is going to be good enough – can only be seen as pretty much the ultimate demonstation of a depth of love that only a parent can have, or understand.

There are those that say that only a specially trained teacher or caregiver has the knowledge or expertise to educate and teach a Special Needs child, but I personally don’t know if I can buy into that. Surely having that level of patience that only a parent of a child can have, and having that intimate understanding of your own child’s abilities, mannerisms and personality, must play an awfully important part. 

While in some ways having other more experienced homeschoolers to turn to for advice, support and encouragement can be beneficial, I believe there can be just as many pitfalls associated with doing that. Many homeschoolers make their own homeschooling activities unnecessaily expensive, overly time consuming and cumbersome. In addition many of their experiences might well not apply in the case of a Special Needs Child.

But there is a thought I have about educating a Special Needs child at home that I find particularly exciting.
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28th
Jan 2011

Visual Learning for Special Needs

Subtitled Educational Videos and Your Special Needs Child

We begin this fourth article in the series about Visual Learning by looking at exactly what Visual Learning is and what the term Special Needs is generally accepted to mean. Then as we move on we will examine how the various techniques and ways that subtitled educational video can be used to provide an effective way of achieving education advancement with your Special Needs child or student.

The definition of Visual Learning is “a teaching and learning style in which ideas, concepts, data and other information are associated with images and techniques. It is one of the three basic types of learning styles that also includes kinesthetic learning and auditory learning.” In other words, by using subtitled educational video to deliver curriculum material in a graphical format combined with the use of various techniques we are able to stimulate the learning process in a meaningful, interesting, enjoyable and effective manner.

And the term “special needs” generally applies to mental or physical disabilities or circumstances that create an exceptional situation requiring individualized educational programs, physical accessibility or primary care requirements.

Here at Zane Education we feel very strongly about the use of the term “Special Needs”. And the reason is because we believe that every child has special needs. Each one has the need to be loved, cared for, nurtured and educated. Each of these is a particularly special need that every child deserves. However what is of greatest importance is to understand and appreciate that every child is different, and the way we as teachers and parents accommodate and effectively provide for those needs, often comes down to each child’s individual personality. And when it comes to providing education that child’s individual abilities and preferences need to be understood and catered for if the learning process is to be meaningful and effective, especially if we desire to arouse and help develop that child’s powers of self-motivation.
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6th
Sep 2010

Educating Special Needs Children

As a parent of a 13-year-old boy and a 6-year-old girl, I am very careful whenever I use the words special needs in connection with children.

On the one hand I believe that every child is a special needs child, simply because they are all individuals, each with their own special needs. Many of those special needs they have in common with other children – for example the need to be truly loved, cared for and nurtured – while for others their special needs might be more individually specific to them.

On the other hand however, special needs is often a term broadly applied to those either children that are advantaged in some way, while other children are described as being special needs because they are disadvantaged or have difficulties in other ways.

But there is another important reason why I am cautious about using the word special needs. The reason that I am cautious is because virtually every child that I have ever met that does suffer from a difficulty or disadvantage has also been absolutely blessed in another way. It is though they have been provided with something special that the rest of us don’t have, as though to compensate for the areas in which they have problems. And it is simply a matter of taking the time to discover what their special talent or ability is.

Without exception each and every child has their own way in which to receive and process information most effectively, and it is important that we as parents provide for our children a means by which both the child and the parent(s) can discover what that preferred learning style is for each child. From that point we can then take the necessary steps to provide the most effective education for that child by accommodating their preferred and most effective learning style.

And what I find particularly upsetting is that our education system as we know it today – often tries to dictate to a child what that preferred learning style should be. (more…)


31st
Aug 2010

Only One Front Page ……and 12 different education stories.

I have to apologize for a quiet time on the blog for the last 10 days but we have a dilemma to overcome.

Since we launched this website, an increasing number of people have contacted us and explained just how many different types of students can benefit through using our online educational videos.

Zane Education (Zane Publishing Inc. in it’s former life) has had a well-established name in the school and home education markets since the mid 1990’s. And when we decided to convert our 250 educational CD-ROM’s into online video we always expected that it was the teachers, students and homeschooling families that would be our main customers.

However now that we are using the online video format – and most importantly that all of our videos are subtitled – we are seeing that many other types of students are benefiting from what we have produced. Those children include special needs students, gifted students, the disabled, children with dyslexia and reading difficulties, students with visual impairments, ESL students and especially children whose parents and teachers want to help develop their reading skills.
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27th
May 2009

Our Videos & Special Need Students

Often traditional learning and teaching methods and materials do not accommodate the requirements of special needs students. Having the ability to learn at their own speed and independent of the learning speeds of other students is essential if a special needs student is to be helped to reach their full potential.

And this is where having access to our online K-12 curriculum videos can really help to provide those students with special needs, with a very real and tangible learning solution.

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