Week 1

Hello all! My name is Kayla Ford, I am a Special Education teacher at an elementary school in the Oklahoma area. I have over nine years of experience in the field of early childhood education. After spending the first six years of my career as a PreK - Third grade teacher in the general education classroom, I transitioned into special education role in 2022/2023. I am now also pursuing a Master’s in Education -  Curriculum & Instruction, and I am set to graduate in December 2026. I have recently completed additional instructor certifications and I hope to transition into a leadership role in the specialized Curriculum and Instruction within ESL and Reading Specialist areas at my current district.

I have two small children, a loving husband and a zoom filled dog name Gryffindor. We live a chaotic filled, wonderful life spent outdoors exploring or inside reading and playing board games. 

Part 2

The ISTE Standard I have chosen is within the section 1 of Empowered Learner. In my 1st grade special education classroom in Oklahoma - providing accessible, immediate feedback is everything for my students' confidence and growth. When looking at the ISTE Standards, the Empowered Learner standard—specifically indicator 1c, which asks students to use technology to seek feedback to improve their practice and demonstrate learning in a variety of ways—fits perfectly with how we tackle early math skills. We work heavily on the Oklahoma Academic Standard for Mathematics 1.N.2.1, which focuses on representing and solving addition problems up to 10. 

To practice this, I would have my students use Boom Cards on our classroom smartboard or their individual Chromebook (depending on IEP specific accommodation needs/requirements). Because my students often need immediate redirection or praise, the self-checking nature of Boom Cards gives them instant auditory and visual feedback. If they count the objects on the screen and select the wrong sum, the platform gives them a gentle cue to try again right then and there, rather than waiting for me to check a paper worksheet later in the day. 

Once they’ve practiced and are ready to show what they know, they switch over to Zearn to demonstrate their learning in a way that accommodates their individual needs. Instead of getting frustrated by the fine motor demands of writing numbers with a pencil, they can drag and drop digital counting cubes to build their addition sentence, and then hit the microphone button to verbally explain their thinking. This allows them to prove they’ve mastered adding up to ten using multiple modalities, and it also lets me leave them a personalized voice comment as direct feedback. It completely shifts the dynamic of the activity—they aren't just passively playing a math game, they are actively using technology to own their progress and show off their learning in a way that genuinely works for them, because it is individualized to their skill level and customizable to accommodate their IEP needs.

Part 3

When I look at this lesson through the lens of Liz Kolb's Triple E Framework, it really hits on the "Engage" and "Enhance" components of her model. Kolb emphasizes that technology shouldn't just be a flashy add-on; it needs to actively support the learning goal by helping students focus on the task and scaffolding their understanding. By using Boom Cards, my students are deeply engaged—not just because it's on a screen, but because the immediate, self-correcting feedback provides the active time-on-task that Kolb advocates for, keeping them focused on the math without getting overwhelmed. But where the real magic happens for my special education 1st grade students, is in the Enhance piece. Kolb points out that effective technology allows students to demonstrate a more sophisticated understanding of the content by making their thinking visible in ways traditional tools cannot. Programs like Zearn do exactly this for them. By removing the physical barrier of a pencil and paper, they can use digital manipulatives and audio recordings to verbally explain their addition strategies. It completely validates Kolb's argument that the right digital tools can remove traditional learning barriers, allowing my students to independently show what they truly know.