Using Office 365 to support students with special needs

Working in a group of 18 children from three to five years old is quite demanding. Especially if one of them is deaf. There is a girl in my group who uses a hearing aid and has been using it since she was three years old. Though she does not have problems with hearing any more, she has problems with understanding and adjusting to the noise within the playroom. She is a positive and very sociable person, therefore she is easily disturbed by other children and the noise they make. Using Office 365 enables a teacher to record and to share all the songs, finger plays and stories in order to provide qualitative materials available in any smart device from home, where no one can disturb a child with the difficulties mentioned above. Furthermore, a child can mostly concentrate on the content of the recordings and has many more opportunities to be exposed to good linguistic pattern over and over again.

Nataša Gobec
Osnovna Šola Dobje, Slovenija

She was born in Celje (Slovenia) in 1984. She is an English language teacher and a sociologist by proffession, but she is currently working as a kindergarten teacher at Osnovna šola Dobje. She started her career as an English language teacher, but she has become more and more interested in teaching younger students. For almost a year she has been successfully using ICT tools while teaching and has already experienced many benefits of it. She has also presented her work at some national conferences like SIRikt and NT conference and has visited an international conference E2 in Toronto.