March 30 class

In the class Lee started out with a "bird walk" and Lee showed us a new application sharing tool. It looked like it would help make like a little easier. We were supposed to decide what type of weather we would be, I think today I would be cloudy because I am sleepy (yes, still) although I think I would be "sunnier" if I were to take Olivia out for a walk in the wonderful sunshine! We talked about assistive tech, what is it? Why do we care about it? what are some examples? and joy added, Where did you search for examples? What different levels of technology did you find?

We started with where we searched, I searched google, it seems to be the go to for me.Next we went to what we found, this is straight from my discussion board post because that was over a month ago and I can't remember everything I said I found one website called Read The Words. It is a website that reads what you type. I thought at first that it was like Voice Thread, but it's not. What is does is it puts your text into words, this would be great for a deaf student who can't talk. If they have a presentation to do, they can type out their presentation and when they are ready they just click on the play button and it reads it out loud. I thought that was a very cool tool to have. Another website I found was Able Data It has all kinds of technologies for any kind of disabilities from blind/deaf to orthotics. I looked at so much stuff on there that I can't even begin to list them all. There are so many things available for all kinds of disabilities. Why do we care about it? because everyone deserves to have options to use in schools and everywhere else. Just because someone isn't able to speak doesn't mean that they shouldn't have the opportunity to participate in class. There are so many more things that go with this.

some examples are...souns systems, handwritting tools: grippers, TTY, dragon speak, magnifying tools, touch screen computers that allow expression of the individual who uses it, hearing aides, wheelchairs, tape recorders, cochlear implants, books with large print, communication boards, wiggle seats.

We talked about different searches and why library and eric seaarches are better than what we can find on the internet. I think it is because they are more resources to back them up more of a trustworthy area. Internet is a lot more user friendly and quicker to find what you are looking for.

We then talked about flicker and flickercc. I have been to flicker and they have lots of neat photos on there. My neighbor uses it and I like looking at photos she has marked as favorite. There are lots of things to look at on there. Those who wanted to could set up a flicker account, I decided not to do this, my pictures are really not worth sharing :) I am not a very good picture taker! I just followed along. I loved the picture of Jessica "the rubberband" what a cool picture! After that we were to go to flickercc and find a picture to play with I came up with this one

http://www.flickr.com/photos/viagallery/2110571280/

After that we discussed where we would like to post the homework and then class was over.

April 20th class

During check in we were asked to pick an animal that describes how we are feeling today. I chose this sleepy dog. He makes me want to curl up like this and take a LOOOONG nap! (http://madcraic.com/maze/2009/10/02/fridays-sleepy-animal-photo-7 )

We then looked at the ASD website about ed tech. We were to think of questions to ask about the ASD ed tech program. One that I would like to know is what does it take to become an ed tech teacher and what does the job entail? I looked at the website and there are lots of interesting things on there about ed tech. I didn't find an answer to my question but I am sure I could call someone and find out. I don't know if the valley offers a program like this but it would be worth it to find out. During the discussion we were to think of a question and a highlight. My question would remain the same but my highlight would be the laptop program at Wendler, I thoguht that was a very cool thing, I am anxious to see if that spreads throughout the district. After we all went over our questions and highlights we talked about our final project and what we are to do and how we are to do it. I think I may have done my "story board" wrong. I hope not! After we were done with this we decided to take a "45 minute break" HAHAHA! I am sure everyone needed a break to finish everything up!

Global Communities

I had a hard time finding exactly what I was looking for so, I read over others blogs and liked what I found on Joy's blog about epals. I went to look for a group by map and came across a classroom of 8 from Kazakstan, this is what their post says: "Hello! We are enthusiastic 4th graders from Kazakhstan! We are 8 great kids, 3 of whom are ELL and the rest are either native or native-fluent speakers of English. All of us are willing to collaborate with kids of our age from all over the world on various projects. We would love to communicate through emails (due to time zone differences) on a weekly basis. Hope to hear from you soon!"

I think it would be awesome to have a classroom pen pal from a different country. When I was in 4th grade we had penpals from Queensland Australia. That was a lot of fun. I even stayed in touch with my pen pal after school was out for a few months then we lost touch. It was a lot of fun to learn about different countries and how their school system works. If I remember correctly, they go to school all year round and have breaks every so often. NO THANK YOU!!
Anyway, that is what I found!

Videos in the classroom

I finally had time to catch up on my blog readings. I found a blog posted today and I thought it would be a great idea for older kids. On the Cool Cat Teacher Blog she posted about a video she had her students do (highschool students). She posted one video that was very cute. You can see the video here. I thought it would be a fun project for a group project to have the students do a video of their choice using digital cameras. They could come up with an idea, brainstorm about it and then put their project on video. I think it would be fun to host a "film festival" for the parents to watch the videos their children produced/starred in/put together.
What other ideas could you guys come up with for videos? I am anxious to hear all about them.

Research

While doing research for Assistive Technology, I used google on AOL, Delicious and Diigo. I liked the AOL search options because that is what I am used to. I am still having a hard time using Delicious and Diigo, I am not sure what I am looking at but I think with a little more playing around with them I will get the hang of it...is there ever enough time in the day?? LOL!

Brainstorming Process

For my voicethread lessons I didn't really do much in the way of brainstorming. I looked over the website and tried to come up with some ideas (the book reading a writing voicethread). My dad and husband and I all sat down and came up with the other 2 ideas, we just talked about voicethread and looked at some of the videos. Fairly easy to do. I am not really too sure on how to do brainstorming :)

Voice Thread Ideas

1.) Students could use Voicethread to read a book they have written. I would take pictures of their illustrations and then they would record themselves reading their book on the voicethread. This would be great for students in grades 1-5, as they get older they could write about more elaborate things, and the younger students could write about simple things. This would be great for all students. I think that the younger students could take turns reading others stories and I could comment on their reading abilities, this way they won't have to worry about being scared of reading aloud in class. I think this would help with language arts.

2.) Students who are learning a foreign language could use Voicethread to learn the correct pronunciations of certain words in that language. The word would come up on the screen and they would voice comment the correct pronunciation of the word. This would also be great for students who are having trouble with English or ESL students as well. I think that this lesson would be great for students grades 2 and up, students who are reading.

3.) Voicethread would be great for guest speakers to use, especially if they live out of state or can't come in. If the students were learning about ancient Egypt I could contact someone who knows a lot about Egypt and have them do a voice thread with all the pictures they have of Egypt and talk about it too. Another thing to do would be if we were learning about Farming and where our food comes from, this would be a great idea to have a farmer do a voice thread about his farm and what he grows and where our food is grown, there is a WIDE variety of things that can be done for this one. This could be used for all ages and subjects.

Finally figured out how to make it public!

Glad this class is a learning class about technology! :) I had no clue how to make this public. Thank you Lee for your help!

I hope you all have time to view this, enjoy

Creative Exercises for Artists and Art Students

I read on Free Technology For Teachers about a blog for Artists or Art students. I don't know about the Anchorage School District but out here in the Valley they do not have an Art Program, it makes me very sad to know that they don't have one and that art is put on the shoulders of teachers. But this website give teachers ideas for art. Some are really neat! I really liked the three strikes your out project. What you do is take your pen or pencil or whatever you want to create with and make a picture using only 3 lines, you can draw a tree and a river and a mountain or whatever you want. The possibilities are endless. I would like to hear what you all like or even other options for Art in the classroom.

Lets try this again

Apparently my link didn't work. If it doesn't work this time please let me know if you can't access it again and I will email it. It works for me so I don't know what is going on. Here is the link again. You can copy and paste it if that doesn't work http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0AS_KlDWIBu3gZGRmejg4aG1fMGMydzIzemZ0&hl=en

Lesson Plans

I am so sorry this is late, I had a router problem and of course this was on my laptop. Everything is good now!

Here is my link...I don't know if I did it right. I will be anxious to see how you all did yours and what you think of mine :)

Have a GREAT break!

February 9th class

OK, so I know I am a little late but I am getting caught up on my homework. I have a very demanding job being a mommy to a pretty little girl :::GRIN:::!
After listening to the session I realized there was a lot I missed out on, I hate missing class but I felt like I needed to go to my meeting that night...long story! Anyway, here is my account of the class... I really enjoyed the talking circle exercise. I think this would be a fun activity for childrent do as well. I would use it when we are having a class discussion and EVERYONE wants to talk at the same time. I decided that I would have talked about "we are all digital citizens" to me this makes me think about the world in which we live, we have have something digital in our lives from an Mp3 to a computer we all have this. We are also living in a digital era we are "citizens" of this digital era. I checked out the ASTE.org website. The confrence seems like it would be very beneficial for teachers to attend. It looked like it would have been fun and informative. I noticed that the theme partained to living in a digital word...see we are citizens in this digital world :) I saw that I missed out on the KWL chart and I learned a lot from them, who knew there was so much that went into copyrights? I am also upset that I missed the wikibook imput. I loved my topic but it would have been nice to have been able to participate. I hate that I had to miss class. I hope to not miss anymore but I probably will as we have a convention coming up that I need to be at meetings in order to get the information. (I don't think I will miss more than 1). I learned a lot but would have loved to be in class and participate too.

The Autistic Mind

On the blog Free Technology for teachers I came across a very interesting article that I think ALL teachers can use! It was about how the autistic mind works. There is a video from a woman named Temple Grandin, and autistic woman who speaks about her experiences growing up and how she think and how teachers can benefit from this. Here are a few things I took notes on: Autistic children think in pictures. When you hear a word and think of that, you get a generalized picture in your mind, autistic people get a slide show of sorts in their mind of those things that they have seen. There is a movie about Temple and in the movie they give and example of what her mind sees, someone says "shoe" and she has a flash of LOTS of different shoes in her mind.
The autistic mind is good at one thing and bad at another. She talked about how she was horrible at algebra but excellent at trig and geometry, she was never allowed to move on to these things because she couldn't pass algebra.
There are three types of learners, the first is the photo realistic visual thinkers, they are poor at algebra. The second are the pattern thinkers who are great in music and math and the third are the verbal mind who are poos at drawing.
Autistic minds are similar to animals in that they are sensory thinkers they don't think in language, they think in pictures.
Autistic minds tend to be fixated. If there is something they are into like race cars, use that to help them with the subject they are having trouble with. We need to help students who have unique minds to be sucessful.
Give autistic children a specific task, break it down into exactly what you want them to do in order for them to be successful.
And finallyy one thing that truly stood out to me from a teaching stand point is to think about the different kinds of minds. This is something we need to think about when teaching. How to make something work for so many different students. How would you be able to do that?

A new blog

I decided to check out a new blog. The one I had been following wasn't really doing it for me. I am one of those people who has to be interested in something in order to keep coming back to it. So I came across the blog called 21apples.org the first post caught my attention right away. It was about children using google buzz and parents getting upset about it. I read the article "Google Buzz may put children at risk, parents fear" on LA Times. What a scary thought, it talks about how many parents are letting their children use google buzz to have conversations with friends but those conversations are being seen by anyone and everyone and also how children are being followed by older pedifile people...WHOA!! After reading this I was scared for my daughter to use these kinds of things when she is old enough, then I read the blog post on 21apples. He talks about how parents should be watching and monitoring their children. DUH!! If you are that upset about your children doing this then put a stop to it immediately! He says that if your children want to have an email account they should do it through your account that way you can monitor what is being said. He says something that made me think...."would you give your kid a car as soon as they wanted one? Start them off with a tricycle in the carpeted basement and you’ll see them progress much more successfully." Great idea!
This is something that I think should be taught in school, internet saftey and should be sent home to parents! I can not tell you how many kids from the elementary school I worked at have a facebook page and not only that a facebook page that is public!! Where are these parents? Anyone can look into these kids pages and see what they are doing, where they are going, and who they hang out with...ANYONE! If parents aren't going to watch their children I feel like as a teacher I should. I would be devestated if I found out something happend to one of my students because of something so preventable as setting your page to private or better yet...not having one! What are your opinions on this topic? Am I over reacting?

Sortfix.com

I came across this website in the blog Free Technology for Teachers. Sortfix is a really cool search engine that gives you the chance to pick and choose the "power words" for your internet searches and also remove words that you don't want in your search so you can get just what you are looking for. I played with this for a little while and I could see how this would be a neat tool for both educators and students. It would help in searching for exactly what you need and not having to weed through the mumbo jumbo to find what it is you are looking for. What a cool website!

Educational Website

I looked at http://www.starfall.com I spent well over an hour looking at everything they had to offer and I was amazed! What an AWESOME website! It is all about reading. it starts from letter recognition and goes up to reading. I played with each level and this is what I found.... On the letter recognition step you can click on any letter and it will give you the name and the sound of the letter along with a picture and a word that coensides with it. The website is very interactive, you just click on the sparkly areas and move on to the next page. Another thing I loved was the Alphabet song. It features a man who sings the song but he gives the letter and a word that starts with that letter it also gives movements that goes along with the word. I can see this helping to aide in memorization. In the learn to read section, you can click on a word in a story and it will sound out the word letter by letter. It also has some really cute movies that go along with the learning to read. One I watched was how the alphabet got it's order. Very cute! The website has lots of fun things that go along with holidays. I looked at the valentines day section and there was a game that you put words together to make a sentence. I am going to bookmark this webpage not only for my students but for Olivia as well! I think she will benefit from it when she is old enough. I also sent this website to a friend who has a 7 and 3 year old. Her 7 year old is having a little trouble in reading so I thought this would be an awesome and fun way to help him out!

Another blog to follow

The other blog I have chosen to follow is called "Free Technology for Teachers". The one blog that I read that stood out to me was about Web 2.0 and students with disabilities. It talks about the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) "UDL is a framework curricula that enable all individuals to gain knowledge, skills, and enthusiasm for learning. Using multiple means of representation, multiple means of action & expression, and multiple means of engagement you can create lessons & curriculum that all learners can participate in." (from the website) The blog gives some good resources to help students with disabilities to recieve the best education possible and to meet those goals. One site that is given is called tar heel reader which is a free online book creator. It is such a cool website that has over 8,000 books and most were written by students. Here is an exerpt from the website "a collection of free, easy-to-read, and accessible books on a wide range of topics. The books may be downloaded as slide shows in PowerPoint, Impress, or Flash format. Each book can be speech enabled and accessed using multiple interfaces, including touch screens, the IntelliKeys with custom overlays, and 1 to 3 switches."
The blog also talks about a program called voice thread, it allows a person to record audio for a presentation. So if a student was deaf or unable to speak they could have someone record what they wanted to say for their presentation and it would then speak for them. What a cool program!
I think these two programs could be so beneficial to teachers and students alike! I will definately have to keep these websites in mind when teaching :)

More from cool cat teacher

I found the coolest slide show on her blog this morning. It was all about how we learn and how to keep the attention when giving presentations and teaching. Here are a few quotes I took from the slide show. It is called "Brain Rules" and was created by Garr Reynolds.

"There is no greater anti-brain environment than the classroom and cubicle" -Dr. John Medina

Passevely sitting is a very unnatural. Audiences have no patience for tedium. Think of the presentation from your audiences point of view.

People who are interrupted take 50% longer to complete a task and make 50% more errors.

Structure your presentations around meaning and the big picture then support key ideas with details.

"if keeping someones attention in a lecture was a business, it would have an 80% failure rate." -Dr. John Medina

after 10 minutes, audience attention steadily drops. So do something emotionally relevant at each 10 minute mark to regain attention. Tell a relevant story, show a relevant video, do a relevant activity, etc.

Fact: we have better recall fro visual information.

Hear a peice of information and 3 days later you'll remember 10% of it, add a picture and you'll remember 65%.

"pictures beat text...because reading is so ineffecient for us. We have to identify certain featires in the letters to be able to read them, that takes time." - Dr. John Medina

I think that everyone who has to do some kind of presentation or is teaching should see this slide show. I learned so much that I can take with me not only into the class room but also to other classes as well. I thought it was very interesting that after 10 minutes the interest drops off. I know from experience that this happens, if I am not interested in something I will start day dreaming about other things than what is being talked about. I now know that I need to make sure that I do whatever I can to keep the interest of my students. I will have to keep these points in mind when teaching and making lesson plans!

Blog to Follow

The blog I chose to follow is called Cool Cat Teacher. One post I found interesting was about facial expressions and how we judge people by their facial expressions. She talks about how when we frown we put off this persona that we are a negative person. When we smile we put off that we are a happy person. If we have botox done you can't really frown or smile. One thing that stood out to me is "Our facial expressions influence both how people to react to us and HOW WE REACT TO OTHERS more than we know."
How true is this? It makes me want to make sure that I smile all the time :) So please Smile along with me :D

Teaching and Technology

Some of the technologies that teachers need to be proficient in are email, I know of a few people who don't have email. All schools now have them but how many actually use them? Email can be used in so many ways, instead of sending home a note and hopingthat it gets there, or sending home a newsletter about an upcoming event and hardly anyone shows up or brings in anything. You could send these things via email to the parents who have email and know it was sent. Those who don't have email you could still send out a paper copy to. Another thing that is very important to know is a smart board. I personally don't know how to use these and would LOVE to learn how. So many classrooms have these, if you have never been taught how to use them they more than likely will never be used. Teachers should also know how to use MP3 players. There are so many books on MP3 that are available. If you are having a quiet time with your students and need to get some papers graded, put that book reading on and let your students listen to it. This doesn't mean that it is OK to not read to your students but who wouldn't want to listen to a book on MP3? Teachers should also know how to use the computer! My husband is so computer illiterate, granted he is not going to be a teacher but it just suprises me how many know nothing about computers or even how to do basic tasks on the computer! I know that I am always learning how to do new things on the computer, it just goes to show that you are never too young to learn new things! Computers are so important in this day and age, I think everyone should learn how to use computers, and technologies in general!

I do have to tell a funny story. My father-in-law is so technologially lost. He had the hardest time learning how to use his computer. At their house they have a lot of electronics that go along with their TV, DVD players, CD player, surround sound...etc. A long with all of these technologies come a lot of remote controls. He keeps saying that my Mother-In-Law can't die yet because he doesn't know how to use the remotes...we always laugh about that. What will he do with out her to do everything for him? It just goes to show that so many people are lost when it comes to technology.

New literacies for a new age

This video kind of stumpped me, I didn't really understand what we were supposed to be getting from it (maybe I was having a blonde moment?) I understand how important it is for teachers to have higher education so they can give their students the best education possible, also to be able to allow students to build on their learning. I am assuming this is what we were supposed to get from it. I enjoyed it, I thought it was cute that they were called Heffalumps :) but I didn't really understand it.

Did you know 3.0

After watching the video, I really had to think. One of the things that stood out to me was that we are educating children for jobs that don't exist, how do we know what they will need to know if the jobs don't exist? That just blows my mind! And the fact that soo many children are born in india everyday! Where to they put everyone? Thats scary to think about. I also found very interesting the advances in technology and how fast everything had happend it took something like 38 years to the radio to reach how ever many (I can't remember) then the internet, then text messages...it's crazy!

My first post!

Hi All, hope you are all well! "See" you in class Tuesday!