Blog Post #12 - What assistive technologies are avalaible to you as a teacher?

Assistive Technology

Group #1

Sarah
I chose to read up on the different resources that Apple has available for special education students. Apple Support for Special Education. It is absolutely incredible to see the amazing ways that Apple is reaching out to make resources for special education. The “Speak Selection” is simple but so incredibly helpful for students who need to hear a word as it’s being read, this can help with comprehension for a wide range of learners! The Speak Selection can read text messages, emails, ebooks, and web pages. This is just one of many great options Apple has for special education students. Another resource that I saw was one that I just recently heard about in my EDM 310 class, iBooks. iBooks Author is where teachers can create a customized learning material to support each and every learning need. iBooks have a variety of features like 3D images, video, and audio. I believe this could be a great resource for special education students, because of the ability to customize the learning material, and that is so incredibly important because each student is different and will learn differently. There are many more wonderful examples of resources that Apple has available for special education students, and I believe that Apple has done an excellent job using technology as a fundamental way of learning for special education students.

Katie
I chose the video about teaching introductory math to young blind students by means of a touchpad. This video was Teaching Math to the Blind. In this, Professor Art Karshmer at the University of San Francisco offers a solution to the issue that blind students face in learning math. Here is a simple example of this issue: sighted students see an addition problem with one addend on top of the other with the sum underneath while blind students can only see the problems straight across on one line. This is a problem because the students are not able to develop a strong foundation in math and therefore are severely limited in their potential to go into certain career fields in their future. With the touchpad described in the video, the blind students are able to learn math more like a sighted student would. This would help them learn fundamentals of math better so they have a better chance with it in their futures.

Meagan
I chose to watch the video Teaching Mom What Her Deaf/Blind Child Is Learning On the iPad. In this video, the teacher is showing one mother Voiceover for iPad. She is teaching the mother how her deaf/blind child is using his/her iPad. She goes over the different ways to use and explore through the iPad with just the touch of their fingertips. I think that this is a great way for the parents to see just how much their child can accomplish with technology, no matter the child’s disability. I suggest all teachers that will have students that might have these disabilities go through an iPad training as this mother did to experience what their student/students will.

 Link to photo source: quotephotos.net

Project #4 C4T - #3 Commenting on Liz B. Davis' Blog: The Power of Educational Technology

The third teacher I had to comment on was Liz B. Davis. Her blog is  The Power of Educational Technology. 

The first post of hers I commented on was,  Using Design Thinking to Reimagine Back to School Night. In this she explains how they tried to incorporate the Design Thinking model mentioned in Tom and David Kelly's book "Creative Confidence." To do this, they broke into groups.

In their process, they conducted interviews to understand am "empathize" with teacher and parent experiences. After that, they "defined." This means that they came up "with an actionable problem statement." The next step was to "ideate," or to create ideas. This involved brainstorming, choosing the favorite ideas, and as groups refining the idea they wish to move forward with. After that, the groups were to create a "prototype". It was now time to create their idea. "Prototypes can be anything that takes a physical form." The final step was to "test," this concluded with making their solution better.

After the process, the groups share their information with each other and fill out evaluations of the different ideas presented to provide feedback.

My comment on her blog was the following:
"I like the idea of getting the teachers to get parent responses. I also think the process described is a very effective one to achieve the goals. With a supportive and hardworking group I think this plan could work very well."

The second post of hers I commented on was an older post than the previous one. This post was Passion Driven Professional Development - Teachers Unplugged at NAISAC14. In this post she describes an "unconference." Through this type of conference, whoever shows up suggests the topics, from there the participants voted on which topics they wanted to discuss. If nobody shows up to your conference or the conference you are attending is not what you thought it would be, then go to another one. These discussions will last for about 20 minutes. To wrap up the conferences, everyone in the group tells something they learned.

My comment on her blog was the following:
"I definitely see how this could be a good change to the tradition style of conference. This could be very welcomed for those who are tired of the same type of in-service"

Project #10 - Movie Interview: Interviewing Mrs. Sarah LeCroy

Project #14 - PBL Lesson Plan #2

Lesson Plan #2 Group 1 W6

Lesson Name:  Daily experience as a native American Category: Social Studies Grade Level: 5                             Lesson Number: 1 of 1 Date: Nov. 2,  2014

Alabama Standard(s): Distinguish differences among major American Indian cultures in North America according to geographic region, natural resources, community organization, economy, and belief systems. •  Locating on a map American Indian nations according to geographic region

Driving Question: What can be learned about the lives of native Americans through interviews and research?

Objectives: According to rubric in assessment.

Students should finish the project to a minimum 90% completion according to the rubric in the assessment.

Activities: An interview will be set up for the class as a whole with a specialist on Native Americans. This will be conducted through means of face-to-face video chat. During class time, the teacher will set up an interview via Skype that will be projected to where the whole class can see the specialist. The students will have the opportunity to have a Q and A session with him. After this the students will be separated into groups to decide what Native American group they will be assigned to. For a class of 24 students, the class will be separated into 4 groups of 6. All these students will work on the same tribe for the remainder of the project and will work together for a later part. The students will get together to choose a tribe to study. This tribe should be different from the tribes that were the 6 mandatory tribes from the last project. Also, the groups will have to choose different tribes than other groups. This is decided by a first come first some basis. The groups that inform the teacher first of their tribe will get to do their project on that tribe. From there, the students will conduct their own interviews with someone who can speak on behalf of their chosen tribe. An example of how to do this would to be to go to the tribe’s website and contact whomever is in charge of education as listed by the website. This person should be able to aid the student in finding an interview. This interview can be  conducted face-to-face, over something such as Skype, or even over email and needs to be a minimum of 5 questions. The students will create their own questions for the interview. The students will have to have their questions approved before the interview. Once the student has conducted the interview, their questions and a summary of the answers will be put online on the student’s blog. Also in this blog the students will have an “In the day of a life of ….” post. This might require some extra research. This part of the project will be done on an individual basis. From there the students will work collaboratively for the rest of the project. The students will get together to work on a presentation. This will be presented to the class and to other classes through participation in a school culture week that the class could help organize in another project.  The students will create a single presentation as a group based of their individual research. Also the students will have to artistically (using visual arts) create things important to that culture. An example of that would be a shoe that is original to that tribe could be created for this part of the project. Each group will have to create 3 different cultural pieces. At the end of the project the students will be required to create their own rubrics. With these rubrics the students will grade themselves individually, the members of the group, and the group as a whole cohesive team. This is for self-evaluation purposes. If the student finds it necessary, he may make 2 separate rubrics for self evaluation or group. The final grade will be decided by the teacher rubric.

Materials/ Equipment: Computer, internet access, a blog, visual art supplies (will vary from group to group).

Homework: Classtime will be given to work on this project, whatever is not finished will be done for     homework.

Assessment: 10 points 7 points 5 points 2 points 0 points Interview 5 questions and did interview and summary 3 or 4 questions did interview and summary 1 or 2 questions did interview and summary Questions no interview No questions no interview Blog Post Blog post completed (3 sections) and proper grammar Blog post completed (3 sections) with obvious grammar mistakes Blog post incomplete (less than 3 sections) and proper grammar Blog post incomplete (less than 3 sections) and obvious grammar mistakes No post Presentation Presentation created and delivered Presentation created and delivered at less than par standard Presentation created but delivery was uninformed (read from project) Presentation was incomplete No presentation prepared Visual Arts Creation 3 artistic creations with visible effort 3 artistic creations with obvious lack of effort 2 artistic creations 1 artist creation No creations Rubric Made rubric and did the evaluations Made rubric did 4 of 7 evaluations Made rubric and 1-3 evaluations Made rubric no evaluations No rubric no evaluations

Blog Post #11 - What can we learn about teaching and learning from these teachers?

Back to the Future
I liked how he had his students make a blog post of what they learned through the projects. It is very much like a fresh take on the old style of just writing a summary. Also, I liked his idea making the students write from the prospective of the balloon after they did the balloon project. It engages both their creativity and their knowledge of the project.
When the students did the "High Hopes" project, I think it was interesting how they even included ....well, the world into their project. They asked for people to send in their "high hopes" and they received them.
He says through what he does, he is "overpowering kids to want to learn on their own." He is also giving them the resources to collaborate with people, become globally involved, and much more.
It is also incredible how he incorporated the student into his classroom even though she could not actually attend. I am sure that made a huge impact on the student herself and all the other students in his class. I think that is a wonderful example to set for the other students who could attend.

Blended Learning Cycle
It takes online, mobile, and classroom leaning and blends them together into the classroom and combines it with the learning cycle (engage, explore, explain, expand, and evaluate).

6 Parts to his Blended Learning Cycle
1) Begin with a good question
2) Get the students to investigate and experiment
3) Show a video to the students
4) Elaborate -maybe a reading is what he suggested
5) Review -meet with the students to make sure they understand
6) Summary -the way he does this is with a quiz

Link to photo source: Rebecca Lathem's Blog

Super Digital Citizen
I liked how he asked the students a question and then had them talk among themselves before he spoke with them about the question he asked.
Incorporating the comic books is a great idea. It makes them think creatively, work on skills such as their writing and the content, and it is something that grabs their attention. This project was also important because it reinforces what they should know about being digital citizens and being safe online.

Project Based Learning
This video tells about teachers trying to blend 3 classes to cross curriculum and create a better learning experience for the students. According to the video this method helps students. It engages them and helps them gain a deeper understanding.

Roosevelt Elementary's PBL program
In this video, the speakers describe PBL as in depth learning, integrated thematic instruction, real-world problem based, research based, involves projects and presentations. This take cooperation and collaboration between both students and teachers.
The speakers describe that they give the students choice in this method. It is trusting them and giving them ownership. It gives them skills they can use in the 21st century. Makes them responsible to teach other and depend on their peers. They encourage community participation. This is a different approach to teaching than what is traditionally used. Through this method they become more engaged. Students are given the opportunity to have a spark to question and learn about their world. They are also given the opportunity to work with other across the school and community.

Project #12 - Mastering SMARTboard Skills

Blog Post #10 - What can we learn from Mrs. Cassidy?

Over all, I think there is a lot that can be learned from Mrs. Cassidy in the following videos. I thoroughly enjoyed viewing them and found them resourceful for ideas.

Little Kids...Big Potential 
These students enjoyed the use of technology being incorporated into their classroom.
One of the first things mentioned was how the students enjoy writing in their blogs because people see what they do and will comment. This probably gives the students a better feeling of having their work appreciated. It is like hanging the student's work in the hall, except on a global scale. It also lets them see what they have done and where they have come from. One of the students described the class blogs as being a portfolio of their year.

The class also had a class webpage. On this the teacher has links posted that will help the students with the lessons. The students have the opportunity to utilize this page during center time.

I feel the incorporation of  Skype into the classroom is a great one. It creates a much larger opportunity for influence on the students. It is no longer just what the teacher said. The teacher might say it first, but it is reenforced by the person from that area, in that field, or doing whatever is being mentioned. I am sure this also makes the idea stick better for the students. This can keep the students interested in the lesson, incorporate technology, and still ensure the students are learning.

Another thing that can be clearly seen, but was not specifically mentioned is that it is a big deal for these students to have "the people from Alabama" commenting on their blogs. The fact that the students even mentioned it shows that it made an impact of them. The C4K assignments mean a lot to these students to be recognized by somebody (in this case) in a completely different country.

Link to photo source: Frances Judd's Blog
Cassidy 13 Part 1
One thing that stood out to me was when Mrs. Cassidy said that her students really enjoyed the use of technology in the classroom because it was not strange to them. In their world it just is there. For the students that I will be teaching, most of the technology we have now (or at least something similar) has been around for their whole lives. They have not known a world without it. Also as she put it, it is a handicap to not take advantage of the tools now available for education.

According to Mrs. Cassidy, the best thing about the blogs is the audience. It is exciting for the students to see the page views and for them to know that are interested in what they are doing.

Cassidy 13 Part 2
I liked her advice that a good place to start is where you are interested. "For everybody there is a different entry point." Also, how she said that at first Twitter seems useless because you feel like you are saying something and nobody is listening, is very true for me. At first I was thinking that it is useless and that nobody was even looking. Shortly after I started getting more followers (I still do not have many, but there is at least something).

Link to photo source: HR.BLR.com

Cassidy 13 Part 3
While she was talking about how often she incorporated technology she mentioned that it varied from year to year. I definitely agree that it is important to change the classroom depending on the class and also to keep things original and updated. I liked; though, how she said in years where she has a larger class, she uses blogs as a station. I think that is a great idea.

Something she reiterated in this video that I think is important is how she helps keep her students protected. She teaches them to not use their last names, not to post pictures of themselves, and also what places are safe places on the internet for her students to go. She also tells them to only click on the things they should, such as telling the students, "the part in the middle is what you should click on that is what the teacher wants you to use to learn."