GENERAL EXCELLENCE AWARD

MECHELLE DE CRAENE
Teacher
James Buchanan Middle School
Tampa, FL
Cable System: Bright House Networks

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As a special needs and gifted education teacher, Mechelle De Craene is contributing new voices to the world of social computing. De Craene's innovative project, Very Special Techies, encourages media literacy through multimodal learning opportunities for students with special needs. In addition to using media to aid in class instruction, De Craene started a class blog that serves as a virtual peer support group for her special needs students.

Social computing is the use of information and communication technology to support social interaction and communication. Students with special needs today are blogging, podcasting, taking virtual field trips, locating friends via global positioning systems and even participating in online games in which players interact in a virtual world. Because more than 70 percent of people with disabilities are disadvantaged by the digital divide, teachers like De Craene place great importance on implementing computing in their special needs classrooms. She used pedagogical blogs as a virtual support system and as a way for her students to develop their own voices in the blogosphere. While using the blogs, her students showed increased writing motivation and expressivity (i.e. voice), more comfort with technology and improved reading scores on standardized tests. A study on De Craene's program has been translated into Dutch and Hebrew as an educational resource for special educators internationally.

"It is both fun and inspiring to see the kids' faces light up in front of their computers, and I am happy to know my work has inspired other special education teachers to try multimedia projects with their students." Mechelle De Craene